of an “earlier” stratigraphic horizon than that to which the fossils of the subjacent rock belong, the former is pronounced to be “older,” despite the fact that the actual stratigraphic order conveys the opposite impression. “We still regard fossils,” says J. W. Judd, “as the ‘medals of creation,’ and certain types of life we take to be as truly characteristic of definite periods as the coins which bear the image and superscription of a Roman emperor or of a Saxon king.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 356.) Thus it comes to pass, in the last analysis, that fossils, on the one hand, are dated according to the consecutive strata, in which they occur, and strata, on the other hand, are dated according to the fossils which they contain. Such procedure, if not actually tantamount to a _vicious circle_, is, to say the least, in imminent danger of becoming so. For, even assuming the so-called empirical generalization, that makes certain fossils typical of certain definitely-aged geological “formations,” to be based upon induction sufficiently complete and analytic to insure certainty, at least, in the majority of instances, and taking it for granted that we are dealing with a case, where the actual evidence of stratigraphy is not in open conflict with that of the index fossils, who does not see that such a system of chronology lends itself only too readily to manipulation of the most arbitrary kind, whenever the pet preconceptions of the evolutionary chronologist are at stake? How, then, can we be sure, in a given case, that a verdict based exclusively on the “evidence” of index fossils will be reliably _objective_? It is to be expected that the evolutionist will refrain from the temptation to give himself the benefit of every doubt? Will there not be an almost irresistible tendency on the part of the convinced transformist to revise the age of any deposit, which happens to contain fossils that, according to his theory, ought not to occur at the time hitherto assigned?