OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF DESCENT. 321 



Page 283 Professor Pictet, in commenting on early 

 transitional forms, and taking birds as an il- 

 lustration, can not see how the successive modifications 

 of the anterior limbs of a supposed prototype could pos- 

 sibly have been of any advantage. But look at the pen- 

 guins of the Southern Ocean ; have not these birds their 

 front limbs in this precise intermediate state of "neither 

 true arms nor true wings " ? Yet these birds hold their 

 place victoriously in the battle for life ; for they exist in 

 infinite numbers and of many kinds. I do not suppose 

 that we here see the real transitional grades through 

 which the wings of birds have passed ; but what special 

 diflBculty is there in believing that it might profit the 

 modified descendants of the penguin, first to become en- 

 abled to flap along the surface of the sea like the logger- 

 headed duck, and ultimately to rise from its surface and 

 glide through the air ? 



289 ^^® several difficulties here discussed, 

 namely — that, though we find in our geologi- 

 cal formations many links between the species which now 

 exist and which formerly existed, we do not find infinite- 

 ly numerous fine transitional forms closely joining them 

 all together ; the sudden manner in which several groups 

 of species first appear in our European formations — the 

 almost entire absence, as at present known, of formations 

 rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian strata — are all un- 

 doubtedly of the most serious nature. We see this in 

 the fact that the most eminent paleontologists, namely, 

 Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, 

 etc., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, 

 Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently, 

 maintained the immutability of species. But Sir Charles 

 Lyell DOW gives the support of his high authority to the 

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