i86 REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS INVOLVED 
ferns, palms, cycads and conifers. But with the upper Cretaceous 
stage of geological history there appears, ‘‘ with startling sudden- 
ness,” a whole array of more highly organized forms, namely, 
dicotyledons representing the forest flora of the present day in 
sub-arctic and temperate regions. Professor Oswald Heer, in 
describing this fossil flora as it occurs in Switzerland, says truly 
that it is ‘‘ the introduction of a new fundamental conception into 
the vegetable kingdom.” Here we have for the first time oaks, 
poplars, plane-trees, walnuts, figs, willows, tulip-trees (Lyrio- 
dendra), hornbeams and myrtles, representing the temperate flora 
of the present day, and developed on a new organic principle as 
compared with that of preceding geological periods. The change 
from the monocotyledenous to the dicotyledonous type in the 
prevalent flora of these regions is remarkable for its completeness 
and rapidity, and is analogous to that which, as we have seen, las 
taken place in the animal kingdom in past times. 
Now, how are we to account for these phenomena? I do not 
believe, given all the license that you may demand for the 
incompleteness of the geological record ; of the occurrence of great 
gaps in the succession of strata which we have not been able to 
fill up; these, I confess, do not satisfy my mind as a sufficient 
reason for the appearance of these types. But we have other 
types. We have the first appearance of the vertebrata and 
mammalia, all coming in, in great numbers, at certain geological 
periods. Do not these indicate special epochs in the Divine plan ? 
As for the theory of the origin of species by natural selection, I 
have acknowledged to a certain extent its force, as I suppose 
every geologist has; but the types of life in the animal and plant 
world form a problem that we have to deal with and solve, and it 
seems to me that unless we accept the view that the Creator had 
in His mind, from all eternity, the introduction of these fresh 
types of hfe, giving them certain powers of development, by 
natural selection and descent and so on, I do not hesitate to say 
(and I say it most humbly) that I believe the Creator was 
pleased to intervene, at special periods of the world’s history, in 
order to introduce fresh types of life more and more representative 
of the fauna and flora of the present day; and thus preparing this 
globe from. the past ages by this wonderful process of evolution 
and introduction of fresh types for the future habitation of His 
intelligent creatures. 
