DARWIN 107 



elephant with curved tusks and a red woolly coat. 

 Ichthyosauri were found in the rocks in England, 

 and so on. AH these *' extinct " species had to be 

 named and arranged in the system. A special 

 scientific indication was put on them, which 

 means *^ extinct." But this was not enough for 

 thought — which cannot be '' entirely dispensed 

 with/' as some one well said, even in exact 

 science. 



Where did these extinct species come from ? 

 What is their relation to the Creator ? Were they 

 created long ago in Paradise with the others, and 

 afterwards conveyed in the ark, only to disappear 

 in the course of time ? And what was the cause 

 of their disappearance ? Must we conclude that 

 part of what Adam saw was not available for Linne 

 and his pupils ? These four remains, a few bones 

 here and there, do not tell us much about them. 



Therefore, species may perish : many of them 

 have perished. 



There was something new in this, something 

 that obscured the clear lines of earlier science. 

 However, a way of escape was found. It was 

 claimed that these grotesque monsters — ichthyo- 

 sauri, megatheria, mammoths, &c. — represent an 

 earlier creation, with which Adam had nothing to 

 do. Cuvier developed the theory in his grandiose 

 way in 1812. Before the creation of the animal 

 and plant species that Adam found in Paradise 

 there was a long series of periods in the history of 

 the earth, each of which had its own animal and 

 plant population. It was in one of these periods 



