62 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of 
this volume only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; 
and of each page only here and there a few lines. Each word of the 
slowly changing language, more or less different in the successive 
chapters, may represent the forms of life which are entombed in our 
successive formations and which falsely appear to us to have been 
abruptly introduced.” 
OTHER OPINIONS AS TO THE ADEQUACY OF THE EVIDENCES 
OF PALAEONTOLOGY 
“The primary and direct evidence in favour of evolution can be 
furnished only by palaeontology. The geological record, so soon as 
it approaches completeness, must, when properly questioned, yield 
either an affirmative or a negative answer: if Evolution has taken 
place there will its mark be left; if it has not taken place there will 
lie its refutation.” —T. H. Huxley. 
“The geological record is not so hopelessly incomplete as Darwin 
believed it to be. Since The Origin of Species was written our knowl- 
edge of that record has been enormously extended, and we now possess 
no complete volumes, it is true, but some remarkably full and illumi- 
nating chapters. The main significance of the whole lies in the fact 
that, just in proportion to the completeness of the record is the unequivocal 
character of its testimony to the truth of the evolutionary theory.”’— 
W. B. Scott. i 
“On the other hand, matters have greatly improved since Darwin 
wrote his oft-cited Chapter X; many lands then geologically unknown 
have been explored and many of the missing chapters and paragraphs 
in the history of life have been brought to light. The most ancient 
biologically intelligible period of the earth’s history is called the 
Cambrian and, compared with the succeeding periods, the Cambrian 
has always been poor in fossils, great areas and thicknesses of rocks 
being entirely barren. No one could doubt that our knowledge of 
Cambrian life was most incomplete and inadequate. A few years ago 
Dr. C. D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, dis- 
covered in the Canadian Rockies a most marvelous series of Cambrian 
fossils of an incredible delicacy and beauty of preservation, which 
have thrown a flood of new and unexpected light into very dark places. 
It is clear that the Cambrian seas swarmed with a great variety and 
profusion of life, but that in only a few places, so far known to us, 
