580 SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 



gers which overtake theii' Beighbors, and thus iu time the race becomes 

 altered to suit the life it has to lead." Of course, this theory logically 

 requires that every change produced by it shall be for the benefit of the 

 possessor ; that is, for his own immediate and sole benefit, and not in any 

 respect for the benefit of his descendants. This should be borne constantly 

 in mind in considering the subject of Evolution, otherwise we may be led 

 astray, and overlook the absence of many important links in the chain of 

 progression. 



This theory is held to explain and account for all of the difficulties in 

 natural history, whether found in the emergence of animal life from the dim 

 Eozoic ages into the secondary formations, or in stepping from the compar- 

 atively recent Tertiary into the Quaternary, and thence into the Present. 



By this tlieorj^, eked'out by that of Evolution and supplemented by those 

 of Catastrophes in geolog}^ and Critical Periods in the earth's historj^-^ it is 

 believed by their adherents that all the steps in the development of proto- 

 plasms, through the intermediate grades of insects, moUusks, rej)tiles and 

 quadrupeds, and finally terminating in man, can be fully shown, and any 

 , missing links fully and satisfactorily accounted for. 



That the evolutionists themselves, do not agree as to the value of the 

 J^atural Selection theory will appear further on. 



Taking up first the doctrine of Evolution or successive, dependent devel- 

 opment, I will point out such objections and obstacles as I have found in 

 reading upon this subject recently, together with the few additional ones 

 which have occurred to my own mind after giving due credit to the inde- 

 fatigable researches and plausible arguments of such careful and conscien- 

 tious, workers and writers as Darwin, Huxley and Marsh. 



Going back to the geological ages, and beginning with the Eozoic, we 

 find the earliest traces of organic life in the St. Lawrence limestones, and 

 the possessor of it in the shape of a foraminiferous creature composed of 

 jelly and protected by a strong covering or skeleton i^f carbonate of lime 

 and growing to an immense size. This animal was appropriately named 

 Eozoon, or the "Dawn animal," in honor of its having probably been pres- 

 ent at the dawning of life upon this globe. Now, what did this animal 

 develop into? Was any other and higher form evohed from his almost 

 homogeneous structure ? Evidently not, for even at the present day explor. 

 ers of the ocean depths find beds of foraminiferous, calcareous matter^ 

 identical in character and doubtless identical in origin with those of the 

 remotest Laurentian periods ; and not only this, but they find the Forami- 

 nifera of the present day swarming in astonishing numbers and as actively 

 engaged in manufacturing carbonate of lime as was the Eozoon of those 

 days. We find them living under similar conditions of absence of light and 

 vital air, and of enormous pressure, and finally we find them being fossilized 

 in the same way, and except in dimensions, almost unchanged, undeveloped,, 

 in any particular from the protoplasmic mass of the Eozoic ages. 



In the next succeeding period, known as the Primordial or Cambrian, 



