138 
VoL. I. 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
Permit me to illustvato this last proposition a little 
more fully, and you may go home having made a record 
exhibition of the Stoic virtue, patience. 
IV. — The Testimony of the Rocks. 
53. — I can only briefly sketch the results of palseonto- 
logical research, and if I take selected examples, believe 
me, I have not cared to seek the strongest evidence ; every 
geological formation, every group of animals and plants 
proclaims in clearest language that evolution, as a whole, 
has not been gradual, but in rythmic and often rajiid waves. 
We must eliminate the fatal Non from the favourite 
axiom about per saltum. The truth of a theory is estab- 
lished when not only old facts, but new ones, fit into it ; 
a theory is not necessarily wrong, because the gaps are 
still open, but you must not drive square pegs into round 
holes, and think you have made a neat job of it. 
54. — When Mendeleef insisted upon the periodic law 
of the elements, the cautious said, “ Behold your curves 
are faulty.” Not so, he replied, the faults are gaps due 
to the imperfection of the chemical record ; and gallium 
and many another unknown element, even up to those 
weird chemical elements without chemical properties that 
my friend Sir Wm. Ramsay extracted from the breath 
of our nostrils, fitted exactly into the places awaiting 
them in the periodic scale. 
55. — Non' I affirm unhesitatingly, that while the 
imperfection of the geological record has rapidly dimin- 
ished, not one gap has been filled in according to the sup- 
]iosed law of natural selecdion. But every gap that has 
been filled lias been in a('cord with the tlieory of evolution. 
56. — At first, while Darwinism rightly held sway, tlie 
new discoveries seemed to be just what was wanted. How 
we all hugged ourselves when one, two, three, and finally 
four finger's and toes were added to the liorse ! Here, 
indeed was evolution ; but here, as certainly is not gi'adual 
evolution ; the ste]>s are very wide apart. ; they are of 
generic; magnitude, and not the tiny graduations tliat lead 
insensilily from, say Equus to Hi])paiion. We mislead 
our ga])s as if from the gapped fossil insculption 
N R L CT N 
we filled it in — 
NATURAL SELECTfON, 
Whereas it should be — 
NOT REAL SELECHdON. 
57. Take any group of aniuu.ls, and it will bo found 
tliat as we trace them backwards, in time tlu-y grow simpler 
oi' less specialized. This is evolution. Next, it is (dear 
tliat in the life history of each group, “ each advance has 
