EVOLUTION 
is so closely like the dasyure, and the agouti is so like 
the paca, that we must bracket then two and two, as 
written above. So manifold are these respective points 
of likeness that even if white spots on a brown ground 
were not found in certain deer, as wellas in other animals, 
they would necessarily cease to have any weight in com- 
parison with the vast preponderance of likeness over 
dissimilarity shown by the other parts of the body. In 
this case an enormous majority of points of likeness or 
difference indicates the relative closeness of the affinity. 
It is not safe, however, to trust to majorities in zoo- 
logical as in other matters, or else we might soon find 
ourselves in the position of the orator who asserted that 
if hisadversary had documents, so had he, and he held 
that one document was as good as another. For one 
character is not as good as another, and arguments 
based upon any leaning towards such a view would be 
sure to be fallacious. The question is, what characters 
are we to go by? The answer to this question is clear 
enough ; but to apply the method indicated by the 
proper answer is far from being so easy. We may take 
for granted the fact (as it has been rightly termed) of 
Evolution. Whatever may be the truth of the various 
theories, such as Natural Selection, which have been 
advanced as explanatory of evolution, there has been 
since the beginning of time as we read it in the rocks, a 
continual series of changes in animals. As already 
intimated we can trace pedigrees in a few cases with 
certainty ; in other cases intermediate steps have been 
lost or not discovered, but the broad outlines are left. 
Thus amphibians appear before reptiles, and reptiles 
before mammals. From one or other of these groups 
mammals must have arisen. It is not at present 
agreed, the evidence is not yet conclusive on the matter, 
from which group mammals have arisen ; but it is clear 
that marked traces of characters which are not distinc- 
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