THE 



PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 



A FEW EXAMPLES OF LEGENDARY LORE 



MY aim in writing this treatise has been to avoid making it 

 in any way a scientific work, my object being to bring a 

 scientific subject into as simple a form as possible, so as to 

 be easily understood by the casual reader, for had I set myself 

 the task of proving each step and fact as I went along, it would 

 require a large volume, and then I should most likely have 

 failed in the object I had in view, namely, to place the principal 

 facts required to prove the logical sequence that I wish to 

 place before the reader step by step in a manner that could be 

 easily understood, that he who runs may read. 



For a work of such magnitude would have left the pathway 

 of logical deduction so intersected by crossroads of scientific 

 technicalities and by-ways of explanation that it would have 

 bewildered the untutored mind, by the mass of scientific 

 matters, ideas, and proofs. The drift of the logical arguments 

 would have been obscured from view by the maze of cross 

 issues, and the shadows thrown upon the pathway by the over- 

 hanging boughs of the tree of technicalities, so that the trend 

 of the arguments would have been lost. 



My object has therefore been to confine this treatise solely 

 to the facts necessary to demonstrate the logical arguments 

 and needed to prove the concurrent course of Nature, and my 

 hypothesis ; and to arrange them in the order of their logical 

 sequence, and by so doing to reconstruct Jacob's ladder that 

 reached from earth to heaven ; content for the present to uprear 

 the sides of the ladder and bore the holes for the rungs regard- 

 less of the fact that some of the rungs of proof might be want- 

 ing, leaving those who have devoted more time to the study 

 of Evolution than I, in the course of a busy life, have had time 



