On palaeontological evidence of gradual modification of animal forms / W.H. Flower.
- William Henry Flower
- Date:
- [1873]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On palaeontological evidence of gradual modification of animal forms / W.H. Flower. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Insectivores, bats, rodents, and other great groups then existed with boundary lines as distinctly marked as now. Was the order, according to which the introduction of new forms seems to have taken place since that epoch, then entirely changed ? or did it continue as far back as the period when these lines would have been gradually fused into a common centre ? Here we are landed in the region of pure speculation; but bolder travellers than I have endeavoured to penetrate its mysteries, as may be seen by a perusal of Professor Huxley’s presidential address to the Geological Society for 1870* I have so far confined myself within the region of the known, and shown that at least in one group of animals the facts which we have as yet acquired point to the former existence of various inter- mediate forms, so numerous that they go far to discredit the view of the sudden introduction of new species. They show also many cases of gradual modification of particular organs, probably always to the benefit of the race, and also a general progress from lower to higher or more specialized types ; though, as in all other cases of progress (human civilization, for instance), attended with many exceptions, some local and temporary, some only apparent. Whether the inferences which seem to me to follow from these facts are true or not, may still be an open question; for the sake of the stimulus that an open question of this sort lends to scientific research I am very glad that it is so; but if true, if we are led by them to the conclusion that the world we live in is a world of gradual growth and progress, and orderly evolution, what grander view of the Creation and the history of that world can we have opened to us ? | W. H. F.] * Republished in his ‘ Critiques and Addresses,’ 1873.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22352235_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
