VIII. 

 PALEONTOLOGY. 



In the present chapter I shall attempt to she 

 that the great progress in structure which evoluti< 

 assumes to have taken place in deriving man fro 

 primordial protoplasm is not consistent with the tot 

 lack of progress in many of the forms in the anim 

 kingdom. 



The great instability of organic forms implied 

 the evolution of man is, I think, entirely inconsiste 

 with the known stability or comparative stability of 

 large part of the animal kingdom. 



First, as to species, which are supposed to be ve 

 unstable, it is well known that many of them a 

 long-lived. Dawson says* that he has examin- 

 more than two hundred species of Post-pliocene mc 

 lusks, and that they are identical with living species 

 that even the varieties are the same now that th 

 were then. 



Again he says that "Pictet catalogues ninet 

 eight species of mammals which inhabited Europe 

 the Post-glacial period. Of these, fifty-seven st 

 exist unchanged, and the remainder have disappeare 

 Not one of them can be shown to have been modifi 

 into a new form, though some of them have be 

 obliged, by changes of temperature and other con< 

 tions, to remove into distant and now widely sep 

 rated regions. Further, it would seem that all t 

 existing European mammals extended back in g€ 



* Story of the Earth and Man, p. 359. 

 104 



