Missing Links. 187 



appearance of the country. In England records 

 show for centuries the measurements and limitations 

 of estates upon which old oaks have been growing. 

 The land looks the same ; there is no apparent 

 change ; so that we may assume that the change of 

 a thousand years would be scarcely noticeable, while 

 in the matter of wear and tear a cliff five hundred 

 feet in height would suffer a denudation of perhaps 

 one inch per century for its whole length. Darwin 

 estimates that the denudation of the wold in Great 

 Britain must have required 306,662,400 years, or say 

 three hundred million years. A million, then, is but 

 a drop in the bucket in the time since life began, and 

 when endeavouring to imagine species as the result 

 of Darwin's explanation, we must remember that 

 periods beyond our power of appreciation are neces- 

 sary to the result, and are an essential factor in 

 evolution. 



Having looked so far into Darwinism, having seen 

 that the great naturalist outlines a theory and fully 

 defines its scope, the question naturally arises, 

 " Are there no proofs, no evidences to substantiate 

 the belief?" And to this might be said, that the 

 majority of leading biologists of to-day accept the 

 Darwin hypothesis. The modern palaeontologists 

 have added to the information he accumulated, 

 and many interesting evidences have been presented 

 which are popularly called " missing links." Darwin 

 says : " I am fully convinced that species are not 

 immutable, but that those belonging to what are 

 called the same genera are lineal descendants of 

 some other and generally extinct species." 



