176 REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS INVOLVED 
again. Even the colonies of Barrande have been proved to 
be fictitious. It may, in fact, be said to be a law of palaon- 
tology that a species once extinct never revives. Species 
do not repeat themselves in diverse ages; evolution, having 
climbed on from a level it had before achieved, appears never 
to sink back to exactly the same level again. 
5 (10). We may now venture to turn, though in a very brief 
and general way, to embryology. The notable correspon- 
dences between the growth of aie embryo on the one hand, 
and the graduations in biology and paleontology on the other, 
are regarded by some (perhaps rather hastily) as authorita- 
tive demonstrations of extreme evolution. It may be open to 
question how far they really bear upon it at all.* For em- 
bry ology traces the progress from the simple germ to the 
elaborate mature animal, but does not explain the motive 
forces of that progress. Its answer to “ Why does it?” cannot 
get beyond “ It ‘always does.” It asserts its laws as cus- 
Anh not as ordinances. It reveals the executive, not the 
legislative, powers which gevern nature. One thing it does, 
It reveals the orderliness of the progress, both in the 
sequence of growth in the individual, and in the corre- 
spondences of erowth in the mass of individuals. In fact, 1t 
emphasizes the order of the cosmos, though the secret of the 
reason of that order lies just bey ond its sphere. Another 
thing it does. It reveals the inadequacy of the embryo, 
regar ded as an intrinsic material cause, to produce the 
mature animal solely as its effect. It thus shows that there 
is an unknown quantity running all through the problem, 
and that not as a mere subsidiary, but as a dominant factor 
to which the solution is due. It is no elucidation of this 
factor in itself to prove that the results of its working may 
be measured and defined. 
In fact, when embryology has told us everything it has to 
tell, it leaves the question of the motive power which causes 
erowth, not only unsolved, but more abstruse than ever, 
inasmuch as the wonders of the processes increase the 
evidence to the wonder of the power. Indeed in this line 
scientific discovery is grandly building up the altar to its 
unknown God. The correspondence of embryonic develop- 
ment to evolution is like a photograph; it is the reproduction 
* Dr. Walter Kidd in his paper, “ Creation or Evolution” (Journ. Vier. 
Inst., vol. xxxii, p. 191), deals very exhaustively with this subject and 
shows that embryology does not go towards sustaining evolution. 
