SOME OBJECTION'S TO THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 579 



assume that succession was development, that because reptiles followed fishes 

 in geological order, and birds reptiles, and cjuadrupeds birds, and monkeys 

 quadrupeds, and man monkeys, necessarily reptiles were more highly de- 

 veloped than fishes and descended from them, and so with the other animals 

 ;a8 they successively appeared on the earth, culminating in man, who presents 

 in his feeble frame and defenceless construction all of the excellences ot hia 

 predecessors in an intensified and perfected condition, with an entire avoid- 

 ance of their imperfections. 



Of course, in following out a theory of this kind, many of the essential 

 facts were wanting, many important links missing, and it became necessary 

 to invent other theories, draw new inferences from newly discovered facts, 

 ■or supply from imagination those missing links. All this has been done 

 ingeniousl}'', and in many cases, most plausibly. For instance: to account 

 for the comparative scarcity of close links between fossil animals, it is urged 

 that nearly all of the rocks of the earth's crust are made up of others which 

 have been destroyed, and, of course, the intermediate links of progression 

 with them. Just at present efforts are being made to account for the absence 

 of certain necessary geological stratifications or formations, with their needed 

 fossil links in the chain of succession, by putting forth the theory of Catas- 

 trophes in the earth's history, as they are called by Prof. Lyell and later by 

 Mr. Clarence King ; and Critical Periods, as they are called by Prof. LeConte 

 of California ; which means in brief that, as the growth of the earth pro- 

 gressed, certain accidents happened, by which certain strata were either 

 omitted, or to some extent commingled or combined with each other, or 

 •checked altogether in fheir formation; thus accounting for missing links 

 which are necessary for one theory, by advancing other theories perhaps 

 equally insupportable in point of fact, or at least upon which even the theo- 

 rists themselves are not agreed. 



Even with all these theories and their supporting theories, questions 

 based upon them continually arose, which seemed unanswerable, and 

 required the evolution of a new theorj^ to explain. For instance, those who 

 admitted the doctrine of succession wanted to know why these forms of ani- 

 mals and plants should succeed one another and gradually pass into the 

 forms of the living animals and plants of our day? And other questioners 

 wanted to know, on the other hand, how the gradual alteration of plants and 

 animals came about? — i.e., why they did not follow the types of their 

 ancestors ? 



To meet these questions the Darwinian theory of ISTatural Selection was 

 put forth, and was most eagerly grasped and universally welcomed and has 

 "been used by all of his adherents, from that day to this. Natural Selection 

 may be briefly defined to be "the choosing out by nature, or natural causes, 

 of those plants and animals which are best fitted to live and multiply," or ^ 

 again, it may be said that the theory of natural selection is, "that nature 

 only allows those animals to live which (by means of superior strength, or 

 swiftness, or some other marked peculiarity) in some way escape the dan- 



