lude, with
regard to all four objections in question, as Darwin concludes with
regard to them:--

For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the
geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept,
written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last
volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this
volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and
of each page only here and there a few lines. Each word of the
slowly-changing language, more or less different in the successive
chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed in
our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to us to have
been abruptly introduced. On this view, the difficulties above
discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear[56].

[56] _Ibid._

As far as I can see, the only reasonable exception that can be taken to
this general view of the whole matter, is one which has been taken from
the side of astronomical physics.

Put briefly, it is alleged by one of the highest authorities in this
branch of science, that there cannot have been any such enormous reaches
of unrecorded time as would be implied by the supposition of there
having been a lost history of organic evolution before the Cambrian
period. The grounds of this allegation I am not qualified to examine;
but in a general way I agree with Prof. Huxley in feeling that, from the
very nature of the case, they are necessarily precarious,--and this in
so high a degree that any conclusions raised on such premises are not
entitled to be deemed formidable[57].

[57] See _Lay Sermons_, Lecture on Geological Reform.

* * * * *

Turning now to plants, the principal and the ablest opponent of the
theory of evolution is here unquestionably Mr. Carruthers[58]. The
difficulties which he adduces may be classified under three heads, as
follows:--

[58] See especially the following Presidential addresses:--Geol.
Assoc. Nov. 1876; Section D. Brit. Assoc., 1886; Lin. Soc., 1890.

1. There is no evidence of change in specific forms of existing plants.
Not only are the numerous species of plants which have been found in
Egyptian mummies indistinguishable from their successors of to-day; but,
what is of far more importance, a large number of our own indigenous
plants grew in Great Britain during the glacial period (in