ity that the horse will ever change into
anything essentially different. All the fossil bats, again, were true
bats: and so with the rhinoceroses and the elephants. Granting the
fullest use that may be made of the imperfection of the geological
record, it is difficult to account for this, and still more for the
absence of intermediate forms (particularly suitable for preservation)
of the _Cetaceae_. The Zeuglodons from Eocene down to Pliocene, the
Dolphins in the Pliocene, and the _Ziphoids Catodontidae_, and
_Balaenidae_ in the Pliocene, are all fully developed forms, with no
intermediate species.

[Footnote 1: The series is thus (Nicholson, p. 702):--1.
_Eohippus_--Lower Eocene of America; fore-feet have four toes and a
rudimentary thumb or pollex. 2. _Orohippus_ (about the size of a
fox)--Eocene. 3. _Anchitherium_--Eocene and Lower Miocene; three toes,
but 2 and 4 are diminutive. 4. _Hipparion_--Upper Miocene and Pliocene;
still three toes, but 3 more like the modern horse and 2 and 4 still
further diminished. 5. _Pliohippus_--later Pliocene, very like Equus. 6.
_Equus_--Post-Pliocene.]

Mr. Mivart remarks, "There are abundant instances to prove that
considerable modifications may suddenly develop themselves, either due
to external conditions or to obscure internal causes in the organisms
which exhibit them.[1]" If it is not so, granted to the full the
imperfection of the Geologic record, but remembering the cases where we
_do_ find intermediate forms; we ask why should they not be preserved in
other cases? If they ever existed we should surely see _more_ changing
forms; not only such as are more or less uncertainly divided species,
but whole orders running one into another. No evidence exists to show
that any bird has gradually passed into an animal, nor a carnivorous
beast become ruminant, or _vice versa._

[Footnote 1: P. 112] [Transcriber's note: Chapter VIII]

The analogy of changes that are known will not bear extension enough to
prove, even probably, any such change.

Surely if our conclusion in favour of a Divine Design to be attained,
and a Providential Intelligence directing the laws of development, is no
more than a belief, it is a probable and reasonable belief: it certainly
meets facts and allows place for difficulties in a way far more
satisfactory than the opposite belief which rejects _all_ but
"secondary" and purely "natural" causes.

So clear does this seem to me, that I cannot help surm