16 
DAVIS : PRO. PHILLIPS. 
coDtinues,* " If it is not possible in the existing ocean, among the 
innumerable and variable radiated, amorphozoan and foraminiferous 
animals, to construct one chain of easily graduated life, from the 
fertile cell to the prolific ovarium and digestive stomach, it must be 
quite vain to look for such evidence in the fossil state. In the face 
of the assumption requisite to imagine such a chain, we cannot 
venture to adopt it as a probable hypothesis, and thus the idea of 
one general oceanic germ of life, whether we like it or not, must be 
abandoned. Keasoning of the same kind will convince us that to 
derive by any probable steps any one great division of the animal 
kingdom from another, involves too much hazardous assumption to 
be adopted by a prudent inquirer." 
From this extract it is clear that to the mind of Professor 
Phillips, in 1860, the difficulties in connection with the acceptance 
of Darwin's theory of evolution quite outweighed the simplicity 
and beauty of the conception, and he felt bound to reject it. But 
in the short space of a dozen years, the labours of many naturalists, 
in most cases equally unbelieving, had produced such a mass of 
confirmatory evidence, that the theory is now generally accepted by 
the scientific workers of every country. 
The researches of Professor Huxley have demonstrated the 
close relationship between birds and reptiles. American palaeontolog- 
ists have discovered a series of fossil remains of animals which exhibit, 
in a no less clear than marvellous manner, the history of the ancestry 
of the horse from an animal little larger than a dog ; this little animal, 
in some respects very different in structure to the horse, is found 
to have been slowly changed, step by step, through the successive 
stages of later geological time, until the noble quadruped, so useful, 
nay, indispensable to man, has been the result. The feline animals 
have also been shown to have had distant relations, during the 
tertiary period in the carniverous animals, e.g. Dinictis, Machoerodus 
and others, whose remains are found buried in those deposits. 
Much has been learnt respecting the ancestry of living fishes and of 
* Life on the Earth, p. 211. 1860. 
