66 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



established in Middle Silurian time. How is it possible that the far 

 later form should unite these two ancient families ? Even a misalliance 

 is inconceivable. In a wox-d, to describe any such forms as ' annectant ' 

 is not merely to misinterpret structure but to ignore time. 



As bold suggestions calling for subsequent proof these speculations 

 had their value, and they may be forgiven in the neontologist, if not 

 in the palaeontologist, if we regard them as erratic pioneer tracks blazed 

 through a tangled forest. As our acquaintance with fossils enlarged, 

 the general direction became clearer, and certain paths were seen to 

 be impossible. In 1881, addressing this Association at York, Huxley 

 could say : ' Fifty years hence, whoever undertakes to record the 

 progress of palaeontology will note the present time as the epoch in 

 which the law of succession of the forms of the higher animals was 

 determined by the observation of palaeontological facts. He will point 

 out that, just as Steno and as Cuvier were enabled from their knowledge 

 of the empirical laws of co-existence of the parts of animals to conclude 

 from a part to a whole, so the knowledge of the law of succession of 

 forms empowered their successors to conclude, from one or two terms 

 of such a succession, to the whole series, and thus to divine the existence 

 of forms of life, of which, perhaps, no trace remains, at epochs of 

 inconceivable remoteness in the past.' 



Descent Not a Corollary oj Succession. 

 Note that Huxley spoke of succession, not of descent. Succession 

 undoubtedly was recognised, but the relation between the terms of the 

 succession was little understood, and there was no proof of descent. 

 Let us suppose all written records to be swept away, and an attempt 

 made to reconstruct English history from coins. We could set out our 

 monarchs in true order, and we m^ight suspect that the throne was 

 hereditary; but if on that assumption we were to make James I. the 

 son of Elizabeth — well, but that's just wliat palaeontologists are con- 

 stantly doing. The famous diagram of the Evolution of the Horse which 

 Huxley used in his American lectures has had to be coiTected in the 

 light of the fuller evidence recently tabulated in a handsome volume 

 by Professor H. P. Osborn and his coadjutors. Palaeotherium, which 

 Huxley regarded as a direct ancestor of the horse, is now held to be 

 only a collateral, as the last of the Tudors were collateral ancestors 

 of the Stuarts. The later Anchitherium must be eliminated from the 

 true line as a side-branch — a Young Pretender. Sometimes an apparent 

 succession is due to immigration of a distant relative from some other 

 region — 'The glorious House of Hanover and Protestant Succession.' 

 It was, you will remember, by such migrations that Cuvier explained 

 the renewal of life when a previous fauna had become extinct. He 

 admitted succession but not descent. If he rejected special creation, 

 he did not accept evolution. 



Descent, then, is not a corollary of succession. Or, to broaden the 

 statement, history is not the same as evolution. History is a succession 

 of events. Evolution means that each event has sprung from the pre- 

 ceding one. Not that the preceding event was the active cause of its 

 successor, but that it was a necessary condition of it. For the evolu' 



