128 
VoL. I. 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
to require ten million separate miracles for the creation 
of ten million separate forms. It became daily more 
unlikely that time after time the earth had been swept 
clean. Xoah’s deluge was difficult enough to accept, 
but a hundred, may be several hundred, universal deluges 
were quite unreasonable. Then, too, it seemed such a 
waste of cieative energy to kill off a Avhole fauna and flora 
only to create another so like it that one had to employ 
palseontologists at handsome salaries to point out the 
differences. 
9. — The time was ripening for the acceptance of 
Evolution. And in the fulness of time came Darwin. 
October 23rd, B.C. 4-004. may be a very mythical date, 
but there is no shadow of doubt whatever about November 
24th, 1859, for on that day Darwin’s “ Origin of Species’’ 
saw' the light. It is immaterial wffiether that form of 
evolution know n as Darwinism is true or not ; Darwin’s 
great w'ork w'as to convert the w^orld to a belief in Evolution. 
He did not discover evolution ; tlie idea of descent w ith 
modification had been steadily making its way for a 
century. Nor w'as he alone : Wallace and Hooker (alas, 
the sole survivors of a race of giants), and many another, 
w'ere hovering upon the verge, or even breaking within 
the boundary, of the great theory. But, as all gratefully 
admit, it was around Darwin and his works that Evolution 
found an abiding place. 
10. — Without, for the present, going deeper into 
Darwin’s views, it is necessary to point out how' he and his 
followers made yet further inroads into the coffers of the 
bank of time. The Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution, 
put very roughly, depends upon the accumulation of 
small, beneficial variations, which in course of time so alter 
the original form that it becomes a new' species. Darwin 
saw. and constantly emphasized the fact, that this must 
be an incredibly slow process. In his celebrated diagram 
illustrating the effects of Natural Selection, he suggests, 
“ a thousand or more generations ” as necessary to 
produce a w'ell-marked variety, and ten thousand genera- 
tions to ])roduce even an ill-defined species. He tells us. 
again, that the vast, though unmeasured, period of a 
whole geological formation may be necessary for the con- 
version of a slight variety into a neAV species. Almost 
every follower of Darwin has w'ritten in the same strain ; 
many do so to this day. A few, among them Wallace and 
myself, years ago sought to shorten this period. We said 
that the analogy of the present epoch might be misleading. 
since Ave are living in times of exceptional geological 
quietude. But A^'e Avere scarce heeded, and indeed our 
knowledge AA^as not deep enough to enforce our aucaa'S 
convincingly. 
