Chap. XV.] RECAPITULATION. 273 



every geological formation charged with such links ? 

 Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford 

 plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms 

 of life ? Although geological research has undoubtedly 

 revealed the former existence of many links, bringing 

 numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not 

 yield the infinitely many fine gradations between past 

 and present species required on the theory ; and this is 

 the most obvious of the many objections which may be 

 urged against it. Why, again, do whole groups of allied 

 species appear, though this appearance is often false, to 

 have come in suddenly on the successive geological 

 stages ? Although we now know that organic beings 

 appeared on this globe, at a period incalculably remote, 

 long before the lowest bed of the Cambrian system 

 was deposited, why do we not find beneath this system 

 great piles of strata stored with the remains of the pro- 

 genitors of the Cambrian fossils ? For on the theory, 

 such strata must somewhere have been deposited at 

 these ancient and utterly unknown epochs of the world's 

 history. 



I can answer these questions and objections only on 

 the supposition that the geological record is far more im- 

 perfect than most geologists believe. The number of 

 specimens in all our museums is absolutely as nothing 

 compared with the countless generations of countless 

 species which have certainly existed. The parent-form 

 of any two or more species would not be in all its char- 

 acters directly intermediate between its modified off- 

 spring, any more than the rock-pigeon is directly inter- 

 mediate in crop and tail between its descendants, the 

 pouter and fantail pigeons. We should not be able 

 to recognise a species as the parent of another and 



