for existence. If therefore the millions of transition-forms were still
missing, and the known petrified forms of older strata of the earth did
not reveal them, the Darwinians were able to console themselves until
from 20 to 40 years ago, with the assertion that our knowledge was
still too deficient, that a more thorough investigation of the earth's
surface and especially of out-of-the-way parts would eventually bring
to light the supposed transition forms. Such assertion affords very
poor consolation, and is anything but scientific. The method of natural
science consists in establishing general principles on the basis of the
materials actually furnished by experiments and observation and not in
excogitating general laws and then consoling oneself with the thought
that while our knowledge of nature is as yet extremely imperfect, time
will furnish the actual material necessary to substantiate our guesses.
But since then many a year has come and gone and Darwinism has caused,
and for that alone it deserves credit, a diligent research in every
field of natural science, and has promoted among palaeontologists a
search for the missing transition-forms. The materials of investigation
from the field of palaeontology have also wonderfully increased during
these decades. Hence it is worth while now at the dawn of the new
century to examine this material with a view to its availableness for
the theory of Descent and especially for Darwinism.

Professor Steinmann has recently done so in Freiburg in Breisgau, on
the occasion of an address as Rector of the University. What
conclusions did he reach?

Steinmann declares it to be the primary task of post-Darwinian
palaeontology "to arrange the fossil animal and plant-remains in the
order of descent and thus to build up a truly natural, because
historically demonstrable, classification of the animal and
plant-world." At the outset it is to be noted that for various reasons
palaeontology is unable to execute this momentous task in its full
extent. The evidence of palaeontology is deficient, if for no other
reason than that many animal organisms could not be preserved at all on
account of their soft bodies; many animal groups have, nevertheless,
received an unusual increase (mollusks, radiata, fish, saurians,
vertebrates, and dendroid plants).

As regards the attempt made in the sixties to draw up lines of descent,
Steinmann repudiates, without, of course, mentioning names, the family