102 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



Of course it does not attempt to do this from tl 

 geological evidence alone, but if Darwin's stateme: 

 with regard to extinct forms is true, then if we ac 

 to our knowledge of extinct species our knowledge i 

 those that are living, still the total amount of o 

 knowledge of species must be almost nothing coi 

 pared with our ignorance of the facts in relation 

 them. 



If this is true, is it not beyond our province- 

 attempt to frame a theory to account for the orig 

 and relations of known species, and also of an infini 

 number of assumed unknown forms? Evolution h 

 abandoned paleontology largely as an unfruitful fiel 

 and yet paleontology contains nearly the whole recor 

 both as to time and as to the number of species. 



Is not the effort of evolution much like attemptii 

 to construct a definite history of all ancient natio 

 from our knowledge of modern history combined wi 

 a few fragments that have come to us from ancie 

 times? 



This must be so if the record is so extremely fra 

 mentary as Darwin and Romanes would have us b 

 lieve. The latter says : "Probably not one per ce 

 of the species of animals which have inhabited tl 

 earth has left a single individual as a fossil, where 

 to record its past existence."* 



Of the total number of species that have been pi 

 served as fossils, I presume that, according to 1 

 method of estimating, it would be safe to say th 

 not more than one in a hundred has yet been d 

 covered, so that we have a knowledge of one on 

 hundredth of one per cent — or, we are acquaint 

 with only one species in ten thousand of the tol 

 number that have existed. 



If anything like this is true, it would seem to be 



* Darwin and After Darwin, p. 423 



