SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 581 



fossils are very scarce and especially in the western liemisjDhere, where the 

 Eozoon lived and flourished and where, naturally and in accordance with 

 the Evolution theory, we should have expected to find evidences of an ad- 

 vanced stage of animal life in its developing successors. In Europe, how- 

 ever, some fossils have been found in this series, many of which are similar 

 to the Eozoon, and others are the first rej)resentative8 of the great class of 

 Mollusks; called Lingulffi. JSTow, singular as it may seem, in spite of Evolu- 

 tion and Natural Selection, these little shell-fish, these Lingulse, have con- 

 tinued to exist and thrive almost from "the beginning" until now, maintain- 

 ing their original forms and peculiar characteristics throughout all this 

 incalculable time. 



Among the fossils of the Primordial age are also found quite abundantly 

 the Trilobites, which continue to abound in every formation, from the Cam- 

 brian to the Carboniferous, and whose descendants, if they had any, which 

 has been questioned, but which the recent investigations of Mr. Walcott 

 among the Trenton limestones render quite certain, may be found in the 

 existing horse-shoe or king crabs, whose habits of life, manner of locomotion 

 and organic structure are almost precisely similar ; proving that Evolution 

 has done nothing towards developing the Trilobites into higher organisms. 



Though animal life was not \qyj abundant in the Palaeozoic ages, it is 

 pretty well established that three of the great subdivisions of animals, viz : 

 the Eadiata, the Mollusca and the Annulosa were represented even in those 

 days, while Dr. Bigsby in his Ihesaurus Siluricus enumerates more than 900 

 species existing in the Primordial alone, many of which were as perfect in 

 form and structure as any of their descendants, many of which were sup- 

 jjlied with structures totally diverse from each other and yet admirably sub- 

 serving similar ends, and many of which possessed organs, like the multil- 

 ocular eyes of the Trilobites, as perfect and complex as those possessed by 

 similar animals of the present day. 



Coming to the Silurian ages, we pass hurriedly over the huge crustace- 

 ans, cuttle-fishes and star-fishes, which seem t© have attained their maximum 

 of size and perfection in that age and to have passed almost entirely away, 

 though their sadly deteriorated descendants still exist in our modern seas 

 and oceans, and take up the grand, striking feature of its animal life, the 

 Yertebrate Pishes, which suddenlj* made their appearance, springing into 

 existence, Minerva like, full armed and equipped, and with structures allied 

 to existing sharks, which occupy the summit offish organization. This un- 

 heralded appearance of vertebrates in the Silurian waters, without previous 

 intimation through any approximating forms of animal life, and of verte- 

 brates whose descendants, almost unchanged in form, structure or habits of 

 life, now swim in our modern seas, is one of the stumbling blocks of the 

 evolutioniats. To meet it, the theories of catastrophes and critical periods, 

 with their apparently irreconcileable stages of almost endless, advanceless 

 duration, and then of conveniently "rapid evolution," their "lost intervals" 

 at times and their "fewer and longer steps" at others, have been invented 



