Geology in the Service of Man

Abstract

During the long period of time comprised in the history from the Cambrian Period onwards, the slow and persistent evolution of plant and animal life went forward and left ample record in the rocks. To warrant a belief in organic evolution, we are no longer solely dependent on reasoning founded on existing organisms or on the facts of their ontogeny and distribution. As M. Marcellin Boule says in his work on Fossil Man, “… pour tout ce qui a trait à l'évolution des êtres organisés en général, le dernier mot doit rester à la Paléontologie quand cette science est en mesure de parler clairement. Les plus fins travaux anatomiques, les comparaisons les plus approfondies, les raisonnements les plus ingénieux sur la morphologie des êtres actuels ne sauraient avoir la valeur démonstrative des documents tirés de la roche où ils sont enfouis et disposés dans leur ordre chronologique même.” Although we are only too painfully aware of the innumerable chances that conspire to prevent an animal or plant from securing immortality by preservation as a fossil, the finding of better preserved material, the more skilful preparation of it for examination, and the application to it of refined biological methods, such as careful dissection and the serial sections of Professor Sollas, are giving us more complete and accurate knowledge than ever before. It may now be confidently stated that many of the most crucial links in the chain of evolving life are in our hands, that they actually lived in the past, and that their fossil forms show their relationship to their predecessors and successors. The time has come when Darwin's famous chapter on the “ Imperfection of the Geological Record ”, an apology written with the most balanced criticism and unbiassed judgment, should be re-written and revised.