nd
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be
urged against my theory."

Alfred Fairhurst says, in his _"Organic Evolution Considered"_ (p. 93):

"According to the theory of evolution, and especially of natural
selection, if we start with any organism and trace its history backward,
we would find that through an endless number of generations it had been
very slightly changing, so that any individual is always a transitional
form between its immediate ancestors and its own offspring. This being
true, one would expect, if the theory of evolution is true, to find vast
numbers of transitional forms connecting earlier and later species in
the various periods where fossils are well preserved. This, however, is
not true. Species, when they first appear, stand sharply defined. Darwin
expresses his disappointment at the absence of transitional forms as
follows: 'But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how
poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not
the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which
lived at the commencement and close of each formation pressed so hardly
on my theory.'"

Even a cursory study of such texts as Dana's _"Manual of Geology"_ will
reveal that the development of the plants and animals through the "ages"
of speculative geology does not move forward like a steadily rising
flood. There is rather a series of great waves, each rising abruptly,
new forms often appearing suddenly and together. The very simplest known
fossils, the trilobites, of which nearly a hundred species are known in
America alone, and certain cephalopods (sea snails) are animals highly
complex in structure and regarded by Le Conte as "hardly lower than the
middle of the animal scale." The trilobites possess well developed
compound eyes and the cephalopods have simple eyes, almost as complex as
the eyes of man, possess a well defined stomach, a systemic heart, a
liver, and a highly developed nervous system [tr. note: no period in
original] Observe, that these two highly organized forms of animals,
"hardly to be regarded as lower than the middle of the animal scale,"
are the very "oldest" animals found in fossil form! In other words, of
at least one half of the total progress of the animal kingdom every
vestige is lost. If we turn a few pages in Dana's _"Manual"_ we find in
the sandstone of the "Devonian Era" gigantic species of fish. The entire
reco