1 8 DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION. 



committed to ancient creeds ; and those who are so deficient in 

 the logical faculty as to be unable to see the cogency of an 

 argument. To the first class belonged the courageous priest, now 

 no more, who retorted upon a troublesome geologist, that when 

 God made the rocks he made the fossils in them. To the second 

 class belong men like Parallax and his followers, who still maintain 

 that the earth is flat, and that the sun and stars circle round her. 



FURTHER PROOF OF DARWINISM. 



Should more evidence of the truth of Darwinism be required, 

 it may be obtained almost without limit. Let us run over the 

 proofs furnished by i. — Subordination. 2. — Palaeontology. 3. — 

 Homology. 4. — Rudiments. And 5. — Embryology. 



1. As to subordination or classification : " It is a truly wonderful 

 "fact," says Darwin, "the wonder of which we are apt to overlook 

 " from familiarity, that all animals and all plants, throughout all 

 " time and space, should be related to each other in groups 

 " subordinate to groups. The varieties of one species ; the species 

 " of one genus, with its sections and subgenera ; and genera 

 " related in different degrees, forming the sub-families, families, 

 " orders, sub-classes, and classes, of the so-called Natural System." 

 Now the element of descent has been universally used in ranking 

 together the sexes, ages, dimorphic forms, and acknowledged 

 varieties of the same species, however much they may differ from 

 each other in structure. This element of descent is the one 

 certainly known cause of similarity in organic beings. Darwinism, 

 then, is the extension of this element of descent, — descent with 

 modification — to cover the whole of the Natural System of 

 classification. 



2. The facts of Paleontology display a certain sequence in the 

 evolution of animals. First in point of time, in the primary rocks 

 of the earth, appeared the multiform class of invertebrates ; after 

 these came fishes ; then reptiles ; and lastly, in secondary rocks, 

 we find the earliest traces of birds and mammals. 



Perhaps no creatures are further apart in structure and in 

 function than a crocodile and a wren ; but fossil forms show us a 

 complete gradation from one to the other. 



