--older than any civilization, as we understand the term. But even
they are doubtless modern, when we take into consideration the time that
the earth has been as it now is. How many thousands of ages has it taken
the Niagara Falls to cut their way through the solid rock back from
Ontario to Erie? It is highly probable that the earth has been
approximately the same as it now is for many millions of years. Reaching
still farther back into the past, before this state of comparative
quiescence, can we not find adequate time for the gradual succession of
organized beings on this earth, and for the structural differentiations
which have finally resulted in the present position of things? Because
we see one day succeed another with no change in the organic life
around, because the written history of man records no vital change in
his structure, men deny the possibility of antecedent variation. Man's
written history is a thing of to-day. The builders of the Pyramids were
our brothers. The five thousand years which have elapsed since the
cultivated civilization of Egypt are but a day to the previous ages upon
ages of man's existence before that civilization was dreamed of. The
bones of untold myriads of human kind crumbled into dust before Egypt
saw the rudest mud-hut that foreshadowed the temples of her prime.

The imperfectness of the geological record is certainly a great
hindrance to the exact proof of the Darwinian theory, and is a strong
weapon in the hands of its opponents. But while so much of the dim,
remote past is attainable only by inference and deduction, the argument
is decisive for neither side. One weighty argument for the Darwinians is
the general plan upon which animals are constructed. All vertebrates
have the same typical form. Take off the skins from some dozen
air-breathing vertebrates, place the bodies in an upright attitude, and
they are in general structure identical. The position of the head, eyes,
and ears, the neck, the central vertebral column, the fore legs, which
are arms in that position, the pelvis, the hind legs, all bear a close
resemblance. Of course there are material differences; but they are
evidently moulded upon one general plan. If there were a special
creation for each species, why should they all necessarily have a
kindred structure? To be sure the question may be answered, that they
might as well be similar as dissimilar. But how much more in consonance
with the known action of natural