the hyaenas
with the civets; the Ancylotherium, which is allied both to the extinct
mastodon and to the living pangolin or scaly ant-eater; and the
Helladotherium, which connects the now isolated giraffe with the deer
and antelopes.

Between reptiles and fishes an intermediate type has been found in the
Archegosaurus of the Coal formation; while the Labyrinthodon of the
Trias combined characters of the Batrachia with those of crocodiles,
lizards, and ganoid fishes. Even birds, the most apparently isolated of
all living forms, and the most rarely preserved in a fossil state, have
been shown to possess undoubted affinities with reptiles; and in the
Oolitic Archaeopteryx, with its lengthened tail, feathered on each side,
we have one of the connecting links from the side of birds; while
Professor Huxley has recently shown that the entire order of
Dinosaurians have remarkable affinities to birds, and that one of them,
the Compsognathus, makes a nearer approach to bird organisation than
does Archaeopteryx to that of reptiles.

Analogous facts to those occur in other classes of animals, as
an example of which we have the authority of a distinguished
paleontologist, M. Barande, quoted by Mr. Darwin, for the statement,
that although the Palaeozoic Invertebrata can certainly be classed under
existing groups, yet at this ancient period the groups were not so
distinctly separated from each other as they are now; while Mr. Scudder
tells us, that some of the fossil insects discovered in the Coal
formation of America offer characters intermediate between those of
existing orders. Agassiz, again, insists strongly that the more ancient
animals resemble the embryonic forms of existing species; but as the
embryos of distinct groups are known to resemble each other more than
the adult animals (and in fact to be undistinguishable at a very early
age), this is the same as saying that the ancient animals are exactly
what, on Darwin's theory, the ancestors of existing animals ought to be;
and this, it must be remembered, is the evidence of one of the strongest
opponents of the theory of natural selection.

_Conclusion._

I have thus endeavoured to meet fairly, and to answer plainly, a few of
the most common objections to the theory of natural selection, and I
have done so in every case by referring to admitted facts and to logical
deductions from those facts.

As an indication and general summary of the line of argument I have
adopte