rom the place
where he was then standing to find together the bones of the muskrat,
the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston, declared:
"These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a
lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by saying: "Now, gentlemen,
brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them.
This is the watch that was under the steam hammer--the doctrine of
evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley
beds." Exhibitions like these availed little. While the good bishop amid
vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz
was a Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so loudly
praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was completing his
series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse. While Dr.
Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were
showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false,
the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and
among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth. While in Germany
Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture
requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archaeopteryx,
showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was
discovered.
While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were indulging in diatribes
against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and Filhol were discovering a
striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora. In view of the
proofs accumulating in favour of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the
change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. From all
sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. Strict
adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the verses in
Genesis in which the earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and
fishes, and man was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger
mind like Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell took
pains to show that there might be such a thing as
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