464: Notices of Memoirs — BHHsh Association — 



liable to fluctuations according to vicissitudes of environment.^ But 

 those who assert that the rate of hiological evolution ever differed 

 materially from what it may now be inferred to be, ought surely to 

 bring forward something more than mere assertion in their support. 

 In the meantime, the most philosophical course is undoubtedly 

 followed by those biologists who in this matter rest their belief on 

 their own experience among recent and fossil organisms. 



So cogent do these geological and palajontoiogical arguments 

 appear to those at least who have taken the trouble to master them, 

 that they are worthy of being employed, not in defence merely, but 

 in attack. It seems to me that they may be used with effect in 

 assailing the stronghold of speculation and assumption in which our 

 physical friends have ensconced themselves and from which, with 

 their feet, as they believe, planted well within the interior of the 

 globe and their heads in the heart of the sun, they view with com- 

 plete unconcern the efforts made by those who endeavour to gather 

 the truth from the surface and crust of the earth. That portion of 

 the records of terrestrial history which lies open to our investigation 

 has been diligently studied in all parts of the world. A vast body 

 of facts has been gathered together from this extended and combined 

 research. The chronicle registered in the earth's crust, though not 

 complete, is legible and consistent. From the latest to the earliest 

 of its chapters the story is capable of clear and harmonious inter- 

 pretation by a comparison of its pages with the present condition of 

 things. We know infinitely more of the history of this earth than 

 we do of the history of the sun. Are we, then, to be told that this 

 knowledge, so patiently accumulated from innumerable observations 

 and so laboriously co-ordinated and classified, is to be held of none 

 account in comparison with the conclusions of physical science in 

 regard to the history of the central luminary of our system ? These 

 conclusions are founded on assumptions which may or may not 

 correspond with the truth. They have already undergone revision, 

 and they may be still further modified as our slender knowledge 

 of the sun, and of the details of its history, is increased by future 

 investigation. In the meantime, we decline to accept them as 

 a final pronouncement of science on the subject. We place over 

 against them the evidence of geologjf and paleeontology, and affirm 

 that unless the deductions we draw from that evidence can be dis- 

 proved, we are entitled to maintain them as entirely borne out by 

 the testimony of the rocks. 



Until, therefore, it can be shown that geologists and paleeonto- 

 logists have misinterpreted their records, they are surely well 

 within their logical rights in claiming as much time for the 

 history of this earth as the vast body of evidence accumulated by 

 them demands. So far as I haA'e been able to form an opinion, 



1 See an interesting and suggestive paper by Professor Le Conte on " Critical 

 Periods in the History of the Earth " : Bull. Dept. Geology, University of California, 

 vol. i (1895), p. 313. Also one by Professor Chamberliu on " The Ulterior Basis of 

 Time-divisions and the Classification of Geological History" : Journal of Geology, 

 vol. vi (1898), p. 449. 



