136 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



subsequent discovery, together with the absence of the 

 remains of placental mammals, renders his language 

 more forcible. Relying on the continuity of the 

 record, he thinks it necessary to " admit periods of 

 rapid evolution." 



Without dwelling on this longer, I will say that the 

 absence of the remains of placental mammals from 

 the upper Cretaceous, under the circumstances, I 

 regard as being a very strong, if not insuperable, 

 objection to the theory of evolution. Besides this, 

 there are the other great difficulties enumerated by 

 Dana. 



The history of the marsupials does not warrant the 

 assumption that placental mammals can be evolved 

 from them. When Australia was discovered, two 

 monotremes, many marsupials, but no true mammals, 

 except bats, were found there. These marsupials, 

 according to the theory of evolution, were isolated 

 before true mammals were evolved. They have, 

 therefore, had in Australia an opportunity extending 

 over millions of years to show their capacity for 

 becoming placental mammals, but not one of them, 

 so far as we know, has ever advanced beyond the 

 marsupial condition. Beginning with the present, we 

 have an unbroken line of marsupials back into the 

 Triassic, and possibly into the Paleozoic, through 

 nearly a hundred thousand feet of stratified rock, and 

 they still remain marsupials, not having advanced 

 much in structure from the time of their oldest fossil 

 remains. 



It is said to be a law of England that " once an 

 Englishman, always an Englishman," and so it seems 

 to be a law of Nature, hoary with age, that once a 

 marsupial, always a marsupial. 



The remains of the Zeuglodon, a whale 70 feet 

 • long, have been found only in the Jackson beds, 



