190 REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS IN EVOLUTION. 
evolution ” are doubtless many and formidable, and some of those 
now adduced were submitted by myself in a paper to the 
Geologists’ Association fourteen years ago. 
As the genus Nautilus has been mentioned I may draw 
attention to the remarkable fact that although Ammonites and 
Nautilus, both tetrabranchiate cephalopods, flourished under the 
same conditions and side by side in secondary times, Ammonites 
were absent at both earlier and later periods, although Nautili 
flourished and still flourish. 
Although the author brings forward difficulties in the way of 
the acceptance of extreme evolution, I gather that he admits the 
general doctrine of evolution. And indeed it is difficult to 
understand how any one scientifically minded can refuse to accept 
what is alone consonant with the great teaching of all science. For 
this is that the phenomena of nature are sequential. There is no 
one in the scientific world that doubts that the phenomena of 
the inorganic world are sequential, or that every observed 
phenomenon has had a natural cause, and that cause and effect 
form an unbroken chain. 
The only reasonable conclusion from this is that phenomena in 
the organic world also, however difficult it may be to understand 
the process or to observe all the links of the chain of causation, 
are sequential also. 
Iam especially glad to find that in Mr, Whidborne’s opinion 
evolution, even “extreme evolution,” is not a question affecting 
religious faith, and that if it could be asserted as an established 
fact it would be ‘‘ the strongest argument for Theism.” 
This is a great change of mental attitude from that which but 
a few years ago denounced evolution as hostile to and even as 
destructive of religion. 
Scientific questions can alone be solved by scientific facts and 
arguments, and Mr. Whidborne, it seems to me, merits the best 
thanks of the Institute for giving to its Members an excellent 
example cf how the great question of evolution should be 
discussed. 
January 21st, 1901. J. Logan Losey. 
