THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



record. In 1862 he admitted candidly that the paleon- 

 tological record as then known, so far as it bears on the 

 doctrine of progressive development, negatives that doc- 

 trine. In 1870 he was able to " soften somewhat the 

 Brutus-like severity" of his former verdict, and to assert 

 that the results of recent researches seem "to leave a 

 clear balance in favor of the doctrine of the evolution of 

 living forms one from another." Six years later, when 

 reviewing the work of Marsh in America and of Gaudry 

 in Pikermi, he declared that, " on the evidence of paleon- 

 tology, the evolution of many existing forms of animal 

 life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, 



FOOTPRINTS OF REPTILES FOUND IN CONNECTICUT SANDSTONE 



In the American Museum of Natural History 



but an historical fact." In 1881 he asserted that the 

 evidence gathered in the previous decade had been so 

 unequivocal that, had the transmutation hypothesis not 

 existed, "the paleontologist would have had to invent it." 

 Since then the delvers after fossils have piled proof 

 on proof in bewildering profusion. The fossil beds in 



J18 



