94 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



the 5,500 species that are known, and that, being 

 composed of the same kind of materials, their remains 

 ought not only to exist, but to be found. The condi- 

 tions favorable to the preservation of a species are 

 equally favorable to the preservation of transitional 

 forms. That the absence of these forms should be, 

 not simply exceptional, but quite universal, is a mat- 

 ter of great surprise and of much moment. 



LeConte says: "In fact, if we only had all the 

 extinct forms, the organic kingdom, taken as a whole 

 and throughout all time, ought to consist not of spe- 

 cies at all, but simply of individual forms, shading 

 insensibly into each other, like the colors of the spec- 

 trum, and our classification ought to be a mere matter 

 of convenience, having no counterpart in nature. 

 But this is not the fact. On the contrary, the law of 

 distribution in time is apparently similar in this 

 respect to the law of distribution in space already 

 given. As in the case of contiguous geographical 

 faunas, the change is apparently by substitution of one 

 species for another, and not by transmutation of one 

 species into another. So also in successive geological 

 faunas, the change seems rather by substitution than 

 by transmutation."* Notwithstanding the fact that 

 the record seems to show "substitution" and not 

 "transformation," evolutionists assume that the lat- 

 ter has taken place. In order to meet this difficulty 

 they claim that nearly all of the geographical record 

 has been lost. Darwin says that "the number both 

 of specimens and of species, preserved in our muse- 

 ums, is absolutely as nothing compared with the num- 

 ber of generations which must have passed away even 

 during a single formation." f 



It is assumed that the almost infinite number of 

 intermediate forms which connected the great number 



* Evolution, p. 233. + Origin of Species, p. 318. 



