THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 541 



My views spread slowly in England and America ; and I am much surprised 

 to find them most commonly accepted by geologists, next by botanists, and least 

 by zoologists; . . . for the arguments from geology have always seemed 

 strongest against me. 



That the objection from the general absence of intermediate links 

 between species was a pertinent one he acknowledged with characteristic 

 candor. 



Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; 

 and this is perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged 

 against the theory. 



He recognized that, so far as geological knowledge then went, whole 

 groups of species sometimes seemed to make their appearance abruptly; 

 though he argued that the increase of such knowledge had steadily 

 tended to diminish this semblance of abruptness. Wholly eliminated 

 these sharp transitions have never been, to this day; the latest authori- 

 tative expositor of the general results of paleontology says of d'Orbigny 

 that, though " his ideas " were " too absolute, his observations remain 

 none the less exact in their broad lines, and the sudden replacing of 

 marine faunas, when passing from one stage to another, or even from 

 zone to zone, must be considered almost a general rule." The same 

 writer, 30 who is, of course, a convinced evolutionist, observes : 



After all we can not forget that there exists an immense number of 

 creatures without intermediate links, and that the relations of the great 

 divisions of the animal or vegetable kingdom are much less strict than the 

 theory demands. . . . The keenest partisan of the descent theory must admit 

 that the fossil links between the classes and orders of the two kingdoms exist 

 in infinitesimally small numbers. 



The second argument of the paleontological opponents of the theory 



Darwin regarded as still more deserving of serious consideration. 



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 undoubtedly of 

 the most serious nature. The difficulty of assigning any good reason for the 

 absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is 

 very great. . . . The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be 

 truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. 31 



To all these objections, as to that drawn from the absence of a uni- 

 formly progressive sequence in the superposition of species of certain 

 classes, Darwin opposed a single reply : " the imperfection of the geolog- 

 ical record" — an imperfection due not only to the inadequacy of geo- 

 logical exploration but to the inevitable absence of many chapters from 

 the rock-history itself. Paleontology thus offered to neither side 

 materials for a decisive proof of its case. Darwin's ninth chapter pre- 



^Depgret, "The Transformations of the Animal World," 1909, p. 22; the 

 following passage, p. 113. 



31 Citations are from " Origin of Species," sixth edition, ch. X., passim; 

 this was ch. IX. of the first edition. 



