584 SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 



no one wilJ be more read}-^ to welcome them than the adherents of the doc- 

 trine of creation, who will see in them still stronger evidences of Divine 

 power and wisdom. 



Looking along the line of geological history still further, we find, in 

 the same Triassic formation, the first Mammal making its appearance; a 

 pigmy among giants, it is true, but at the same time a genuine, undoubted 

 mammal, worth hundreds of those "prophecies of future discoveries" just 

 alluded to. This little animal belonged to the marsupials, now as then, 

 the lowest form of mammalian life, but, as I think, a striking illustration of 

 the failure of the Natural Selection theory of Darwin ; for while even Pro- 

 fessor Marsh has not been able to trace them into any higher and better 

 •developed later forms, it has, desjDite its being the weakest and most incapa- 

 ble of the animals of those days, whether we consider its muscles or its 

 brain, outlived all the powerful monsters of the Mesozoic, and, notwith- 

 standing the oft asserted infallibility of the doctrine of the "survival of the 

 fittest," presents the obstacle to the development theory that, low as it 

 started in the origin of its life, its successors and descendants still live, con- 

 fined to t^o species in America and Australia, and still remain examples of 

 the lowest order of mammals on the earth, but little, if any, superior to the 

 feeble Microlestes which stole into the Triassic forests among the giants of 

 the Mesozoic times. 



Of the vast numbers of enormous Saurians found in the waters of the 

 Mesozoic age, none outlived that period; but many of the turtles and croc- 

 odiles of that day have been continued and now exist in almost the same 

 forms as their pre-historic progenitors, not only of the comparative!}'' recent 

 Cretaceous periods, but even as far back as the Trias. 



An examination of this whole Mesozoic period shows conclusively that 

 "before. the end of this age again all the prominent forms of life peculiar to 

 it had reached their maximum and, at its close, many of them had become 

 extinct, Avhile numbers of the weaker forms before alluded to, such as cer- 

 tain Foraminifera, mollusks an.d crustaceans of the Primordial ages, were 

 continued through it, and still continue. 



In the next geological age, known as the Tertiary or Neozoic, animal 

 life seems to have again commenced with Foraminifera and mollusks, as the 

 remains of such fill the earlier rocks of the period, though the fossil re- 

 mains of fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals are also found in its lower de- 

 posits. 



The peculiarly characteristic feature of the Tertiary is the rise and 

 progress of its mammals. We find them on land and in the water, and we 

 find among them apparent types of the animals now existing, though, as 

 Xiyell indicates and Dawson remarks, "they are not the survivors of the 

 F'auna and Flora of the Wealden, but a new creation." 



Without going into details, we find again that the animals characteristic 

 ©f and belonging to the Tertiary age, such as the huge megatherium, the mas- 

 todon, machairodus and j)ala3otherium, culminated and disappeared before 



