Evolution / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/264 (page 23)
    cautious statement; but it seems not unlikely that it was while thus digging his fossils on the Pampas that Darwin laid vital hold upon the principle long nascent in geology, and especially impressed upon him by Lyell, that the present is the child of the past—an idea which he spent so much of his life in sub¬ stantiating. Let us consider some other illustrations of the palaeontological evidence. Fossil Horses.—Huxley made a strong statement in 1855 as to the futility of seeking in the study of fossils for confirmation of the doctrine of evolution, but after a quarter of a century of investigation he was as strongly of the opposite opinion, declaring that “ if zoolo¬ gists and embryologists had not put forward the theory, it would have been necessary for palaeontologists to invent it.” One of the many reasons which led him to a warm appre¬ ciation of “ the palaeontological evidence,” was a visit to America, where he saw the famous series of fossil horses which Marsh had un¬ earthed from American Tertiary beds—one of the most impressive of pedigrees that has yet been disclosed. For although we are not even now able to state the lineage of the modern horse, the chief steps in the evolutionary process stand out with clearness, and he must be dull indeed who can see the admirably