142 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
through natural selection, simply throws the designer back a step or 
two, when he is responsible for a broader and deeper system of 
design, than is involved in the hypothesis of a direct creation of 
species. 
We should be careful not to set too narrow limits to God’s power of 
accomplishing His designs through combination of secondary causes. 
Rev. John Tuckwell, M.R.A.S. — Mr. Chairman,— There are 
processes of Evolution which none of us question, such as the 
evolution of the flower from the bud, of the animal from the embryo, 
and of the solar system from the nebula. But what we do question 
is the evolution of one species from another. The theory is beset 
with difficulties, and we want those difficulties removed before we 
commit ourselves to it. For instance, the theory supposes an 
ascending series of living beings from the most primitive to man, 
but no classification has ever yet been propounded that will meet 
the requirements of the theory. Such classifications as we have are 
simply those of the most eminent naturalists. But we have no 
guarantee that these classifications are in the true historic order of 
created life, and the classifications of to-day will be changed to- 
morrow. For instance, the Mollusca have sometimes been placed 
above the Arthropoda ; but if you adopt that order, then you place 
the oyster above the bee or the ant. Can that be right ? But if you 
place the Arthropoda above the Mollusca, then you place the 
barnacle, which towards the close of its life sinks to the level of a 
degraded parasite, above the beautiful and complicated air-breath- 
ing nautilus. Can that be right 1 Whatever system of classification 
you adopt, and whether you classify according to habit or morpho- 
logical structure, or on any other principle, you cannot avoid these 
anomalies. Yet we are asked to believe in the theory of an 
ascension by a ladder which cannot be found or made. 
Again, do what you will you cannot make the theory fit with the 
Geological record. You have, say, some thirty miles of strati- 
graphical rock in which life appears. The first of these is the 
Cambrian, having an estimated maximum thickness of 18,000 feet. 
But there are four divisions of the system, the first of which is 
some 8,000 feet thick, and in this 8,000 feet you have eight out of 
ten of the principal forms of animal life — all, indeed, except the 
Chordata and the Vertebrata, many of these forms swimming 
together in the same seas and even preying upon one another. Of 
