130 
VoL. I. 
The Queensland Natut?altst. 
suffered, and the nature of the forces that have operated 
upon them, that the earth’s crust is infinitely older than, 
say, Mosaic chronology postulates. 
(b) PaliBontologists draw the same conclusion from 
the study of the life-history preserved in the rocks. 
(c) Evolutionists, especially of the Darwinian school, 
are even more insistent ; Darwin going so far as to say 
that unless one is willing to grant a life-bearing time before 
the Cambrian, equal to that which has since elapsed, the 
theory of evolution (as he understands it) must be 
abandoned. 
{d) The blanks in the chain of fossil life are accounted 
for by the imperfection of the geological record. 
These four conclusions can be compressed into two : — 
(1) Enormous time is necessary to allov of the 
evolution of the present life forms. 
(2) The record of the rocks is lamentably inc‘oniplete. 
This last leads to the ancillary conclusion that if the 
geological records were complete, we should find innu- 
merable slight links connecting living species will) their 
ancestral stock. 
I venture to doubt all this — at least, as at present 
understood. 
TT . — The Real State of the Geological Record. 
16. — The imperfection of the geological record is a 
glaringly patent fact. Who would care to draw up a flora 
from the study of the dead leaves that autumn scatters, 
or a fauna from the chance bones discovei*ed in a forest 
ramble ? But is this a fair statement 'I Put it another 
way. Who would care to determine the molluscan faunas 
of the Queensland coast by the dead shells cast up on the 
beach ? The answer would not only be “ most conch- 
ologists,” but that it is in this way most of the faunas 
have been determined. Indeed, the difficulty is not in 
the paucity, but in the richness of the beach deposits, 
for not only deep sea and shore, but pelagic and even 
foreign species get washed ashore. One would have to 
eliminate as many species as one would miss. And, 
remember, the palaeontological record is largely a marine 
one. 
17. — Even witli land forms 1 venture to think that 
our knowledge in some cases is not so defective as the 
despairing imperfectionists would have it. If our 
veteran palseonlologist, Mr. De Vis, Avere a few years older, 
and had he collected the marsupials on the Darling Downs 
Avith a nullah-nullah AA'hile they Avere alive, I doubt A\ hether 
he Avould have bagged more species than he has done by 
Avaiting a feAv thousand years till they Avere all extinct 
