Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/68

xlvi signs of inferiority to those of the present day; the Labyrinthodonts cannot be placed below the living Salamander and Triton; the Devonian Ganoids are closely related to Polypterus and to Lepidosiren.

But when we turn to the higher Vertebrata, the results of recent investigations, however we may sift and criticize them, seem to me to leave a clear balance in favour of the doctrine of the evolution of living forms one from another. In discussing this question, however, it is very necessary to discriminate carefully between the different kinds of evidence from fossil remains which are brought forward in favour of evolution.

Every fossil which takes an intermediate place between forms of life already known, may be said, so far as it is intermediate, to be evidence in favour of evolution, inasmuch as it shows a possible road by which evolution may have taken place. But the mere discovery of such a form does not, in itself, prove that evolution took place by and through it, nor does it constitute more than presumptive evidence in favour of evolution in general. Suppose A, B, C to be three forms, of which B is intermediate in structure between A and C. Then the doctrine of evolution offers four possible alternatives. A may have become C by way of B; or C may have become A by way of B; or A and C may be independent modifications of B; or A, B, and C may be independent modifications of some unknown D. Take the case of the Pigs, the Anoplotheriidæ, and the Ruminants. The Anoplotheriidæ are intermediate between the first and the last; but this does not tell us whether the Ruminants have come from the Pigs, or the Pigs from Ruminants, or both from Anoplotheriidæ, or whether Pigs, Ruminants, and Anoplotheriidæ alike may not have diverged from some common stock.

But if it can be shown that A, B, and C exhibit successive stages in the degree of modification, or specialization, of the same type, and if, further, it can be proved that they occur in successively newer deposits, A being in the oldest, and C in the newest, then the intermediate character of B has quite another importance, and I should accept it, without hesitation, as a link in the genealogy of C. I should consider the burden of proof to be thrown upon any one who denied C to have been derived from A by way of B, or in some closely analogous fashion; for it is always probable that one may not hit upon the exact line of filiation, and, in dealing with fossils, may mistake uncles and nephews for fathers and sons.

I think it necessary to distinguish between the former and the latter classes of intermediate forms, as intercalary types and linear types. When I apply the former term, I merely mean to say that, as a matter of fact, the form B, so named, is intermediate between the others, in the sense in which the Anoplotherium is intermediate between the Pigs and the Ruminants—without either affirming, or denying, any direct genetic relation between the three forms involved. When I apply the latter term, on the other hand, I mean to express the opinion that the forms A, B, and C constitute a line of descent, and that B is thus part of the lineage of C.