GEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 291 
It is claimed that the later Trilobites are somewhat more highly organized 
than the earlier; but Barrande on the other hand says, that those of the first or 
oldest Trilobite fauna, of the Silurian, rank above those of the second or more 
recent fauna. No proof exists, according to the same authority, that one genus 
has been derived from another. 
Against this strong array of geological facts, which we have given in the 
preceding pages, so adverse to the doctrine of evolution, it is urged and objected 
that the geological record is exceedingly imperfect, and if no fossils were missing 
we should have evolution in all its phases. That this record, as we now know 
it is opposed to their theories, Prof. Darwin and _ his associates freely admit. 
He candidly says: ‘‘ But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected 
how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the 
absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the 
commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory.”t 
We admire the free, frank honesty of Prof. Darwin, that in his estimation, the 
strongest proof of the defectiveness of the record, consists in the fact that it 
does not agree with, but is antagonistic to his theory. If it isso defective, should 
not evolutionists and anti-evolutionists both wait till a better knowledge of these 
records shall be obtained from the rocks of the unexplored portions of the earth ? 
If we had supposed this record were as deficient as Prof. Darwin concludes, we 
certainly should not have written this brief essay, endeavoring to show that its 
facts did not accord with evolution. 
But is the record of the rocks so deficient? We have now 50,000 known 
and described species of fossils, Deducting the plants (6,000) and the articulates, 
and we have about 40,000, representing the four sub-kingdoms of Protozoans, 
Radiates, Mollusks and Vertebrates. Agassiz,“ a few years ago estimated the 
living representatives of these four sub-kingdoms at 45,000, of which less than 
30,000 had been described. Here, then, we have a fossil representation of 
species even larger than the living which have been described. But as there 
were, during the long geological ages, many more species than those living at 
any single period, we may estimate the total extinct of these four sub-kingdoms 
at 200,000, or at most 300,000 species. Are not the 40,000 species, scattered 
from the Archeean to the recent, likely to give us a fair representation of the 
varied life which covered that whole lapse of time? Does not our knowledge of 
the living fauna teach the same fact? We certainly had a correct knowledge oi 
the zodlogical features of South America when our naturalists had described 
_ one-tenth of its fauna. The first explorers of Australia reported a fair synopsis 
_ of the peculiarities of the zodlogy of that region, ere they had penetrated fifty 
miles from the sea coasts. 
: So, while we have a meager list of the animal life of the carboniferous age, 
no one doubts that we possess a correct idea of its peculiar fauna. A perfect 
list of all its mollusks, insects and reptiles would not be likely to enlarge our 
ftOrigin of Species, Chap. X, p. 282, Amer. Ed. 
*Principles of Zoology, p. 27, Edition of 1871. 
