156 WHAT IS DARWINISM* 



A second fact which attests the primordial 

 character and fixedness of species is, that every 

 species as it first appears, is not in a transition 

 state between one form and another, but in 

 the perfection of its kind. Science has indeed 

 discovered an ascending order in creation, 

 which agrees marvellously with that given in 

 the book of Genesis : first, vegetable produc- 

 tions ; then the moving creatures in the sea ; 

 then terrestrial animals ; and finally man. Nat- 

 uralists, who utterly reject the Scriptures as a 

 divine revelation, speak with the highest ad- 

 miration of the Mosaic account of the creation, 

 as compared with any other cosmogony of the 

 ancient world. While there is in general an 

 ascending series in these living forms, each 

 was perfect in its kind. 



Agassiz says that fishes existed contempora- 

 neously with species of all the invertebrate 

 sub-kingdoms in the Taconic, or sub-Cambrian 

 strata. This is the extreme limit of known 

 geological strata in which life is found to have 

 existed. As the evolution of one species out of 

 another requires, according to Darwin, millions 

 of years, it is out of the question to trace these 

 animals beyond the strata in which their re- 

 mains are now found. Yet " crabs or lobsters, 



