20 . HOMO V. DARWIX. ' 



man had branched away from the Old World monkeys, did all 

 the mothers in each succeeding " series of forms " produce 

 offspring " insensibly " in advance of themselves ; or was it 

 only some of the mothers that did so ? This question is 

 important, for, if only some of the mothers produced off- 

 spring in advance of themselves, then we might inquire 

 what bee ame of the descendants of the other mothers. 



Darivin. You have an answer to that question, my Lord, 

 in my reference to " the great break in the organic chain 

 between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be 

 bridged over by any extinct or living species." This icplies 

 clearly enough, that, of the intermediate species between 

 man and his nearest allies, all have become extinct. 



Lord C. I quite understand that, Mr. Darwin. But if 

 you could have said that all the mothers in each succeeding 

 series produced an offspring insensibly in advance of them- 

 selves, your hypothesis would have accounted for each 

 successive series having become extinct. Suppose, for 

 example, that while some of the mothers in each succeeding 

 series produced offspring in advance of themselves — or, if 

 it suit you better, only one of the mothers — the other 

 mothers, being either not so thoughtful, or not so ambitious, 

 produced offspring in their own exact image and likeness, 

 it seems but fair to suppose further that some of those 

 intermediate series of forms would have survived, and that 

 ■we should thus have about us, at the present day, races of 

 creatures graduating, if not " insensibly," yet clearly and 

 unmistakeably towards man. Or again ; if there were " a 

 series of forms graduating insensibly toward man," the 

 number of forms, in that series of forms, must have been 

 enormous ; the more insensible the process, the greater the 

 number of forms. Now, I want to know how you account 

 for the fact — for a fact it must be, if your hypothesis be 



