Chap. XV.] RECAPITULATION. 273 



every geological formation charged with such links? 

 \\ hy does not every collection of fossil remains afford 

 plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the 

 lorms of life? Although geological research has un- 

 doubtedly revealed the former existence of many links, 

 bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it 

 does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations .be- 

 tween 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 geologi- 

 cal stages? Although we now know that organic be- 

 ings appeared on this globe, at a period incalculably re- 

 mote, 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, 

 uuch strata must somewhere have been deposited at 

 th^se ancient and utterly unknown epochs of the world's 

 history. 



I can answer these questions and objections only oh 

 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 modi- 



