DARWIN AND PALEONTOLOGY 227 



some falling, one structure taking a rounded 

 form, the structure next it taking a crescentic 

 form, every single element evolving independ- 

 ently in some way. The theory of the simulta- 

 neous operation of several factors on different 

 groups of characters and on diflFerent kinds of 

 group characters could only suggest itself to a 

 paleontologist working on a very complex ani- 

 mal like one of these big quadrupeds in which 

 ■countless numbers of characters are simulta- 

 neously evolving. 



Third, the paleontologist has this further 

 unique advantage: he is in a position to judge 

 which new characters are important and which 

 are unimportant; he is, therefore, in a pecuharly 

 favored judicial position. By contrast neither 

 the zoologist nor the botanist is in a position to 

 know whether a new character which he beUeves 

 ±0 be important is going to persist or not. The 

 difficulty under which the zoologist labors in this 

 lack of judicial discernment is illustrated, for 

 instance, in Bateson's Materials for the Study of 

 Variation, in which he attempts to prove the law 

 of discontinuity from a review of a very large 

 assemblage of characters, the greater nimiber of 

 which the paleontologist would recognize at once 

 as wholly unimportant and non-significant. The 

 only way zoology and botany could overcome 

 this disadvantage, as regards the origin of new 

 characters, would be through a series of relay 

 observations extended by successive observers 



