are those produced at the same period of development. The flora of one being subjected to the same conditions, must, in main characteristics, agree with the other, if evolution be true; but they do not. The disagreement of synchronous forms has been observed by geologists in various portions of the planet. It is not necessary here to say that the Dakota group gives a very remarkable emphasis to this fact, which has ample place for itself in nature; but has it any place in any known theory of evolution?

4. If evolution be true, the flora of to-day should be different from the flora of five million years ago, and be more complex. But the Dakota group shows us that the species of those far-off cycles and the species of today are identical. No noteworthy difference is discovered between the cedar, the poplar, the willow, the oak, the fig, the tulip, the spicewood, the sassafras, the walnut, the buckthorn, the sumac, the cinnamon, the apple, and the plum of to-day, and the same species of five million years ago. How much longer will evolutionists demand? Is not all the ingenuity shown in Mr. Darwin's “Ori

gin of Species" wasted, and worthless to establish his theory until some one will dig up and throw out of the planet every part, and even vestige, of the whole Dakota group?

VIII. TESTIMONY OF ANIMALS.

LET us turn from plants to animals. After all that has been said about the origin of species, we know, as Dörner has pointed out, that the lower animals have shown no advance in instinct, in notions, in memory, or in physical structure in the last several thousands of years. This undisputed fact shows that if evolution was ever the law of the universe, so far as the lower animals are concerned, it has probably ceased to be. When did it cease? Why did it cease? The evolutionist must answer both questions. If there be no sign of the process now going on among the lower animals, to say that it will commence hereafter is only a prophecy, and it is only so much of a prophecy as a mere guess. Who has the authority to prophesy? there be no proof that the process will ever begin, and there be not a solitary proof that it is now going on, there must be the most

If

conclusive proof that it operated in the production of the differentia of matter in the past. But where has that proof been produced? If there were enough indication of the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous to produce the universe, would there not be indications which would enable us to approximate the period when the process ceased? But no evolutionist has been able to give us any information on this subject. On the contrary, Dr. Matheson, in his recent able book, has pointed out, and quotes in proof an address of Sir John Lubbock, that

since the opening of the human period we have no evidence whatever in the world of physical life of any operation of the evolution principle.*

If testimony be sought from paleontology, it is not forthcoming, but all we can learn from fossils seems to be on the other side. Professor Virchow, the great German authority, stated in his presidential address:

But one thing I must say, that not a single fossil skull of an ape, or of an ape-man, has yet been

* Can the Old Faith Live with the New? By G. Matheson, D.D. (p. 208).

found that could really have belonged to a human being. Every addition to the amount of objects which we have obtained as materials for discussions has removed us farther from the hypothesis propounded.

And again :

On the whole, we must really admit that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather together the whole sum of the fossil men hitherto known, and put them on a parallel with those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living men a much greater number of individuals who show a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to the present time.

M. de Varigny, an evolutionist (in Nature, a scientific journal maintaining evolution), in reviewing "Les Enchainement du Monde Animal dans les Temps Géologique," written by M. Gaudry, Professor of Paleontology in the Museum of Natural History, Paris, also an evolutionist, uses the following language, which is important under the circumstances:

A great deal has been written on the transformism theory of Lamarck and Darwin, and it must be expected that much more will be written. One of

the principal objections made to it is that if man is really the descendant of the ape, and the ape that of other mammalia, if, generally, there exist links between all animals, living and extinct, so that all animals trace their origin to a common ancestor, how is it that no link really exists between man and ape, or between fish and frog, or between vertebrate and invertebrate? Embryological considerations, it is said, show a real connection between very different animals; a frog, for instance, is a fish for some time during its youth, and amphioxus looks very much like an ascidian.

But, notwithstanding numerous arguments to support Lamarck's theory, no transformist can show any species gradually losing its peculiar characters to acquire new ones belonging to another species, and thus transforming itself. However similar the dog may be to the wolf, no one has found any dead nor living animal or skeleton which might as well be ascribed to wolf as to dog, and therefore be considered as being the link between the two. One may say exactly as much concerning the extinct species; there is no gradual and imperceptible passage from one to another. Moreover, the first animals that lived on this earth are not by any means those that one may consider as inferior and degraded.

Mr. Darwin admits that the non-existence of the missing links would be fatal to his theory. If, then, Mr. Darwin admits, as he