Unfortunately, when we descend to details, such palæontological gaps present themselves that every sort of objection is possible. The chain which morphology has allowed us to piece together is continually snapped when we essay to travel back into the past.... The art of distinguishing realities from phantoms of the imagination is what has made modern science so great and so mighty. She is strong enough to win honour by avowing ignorance, and because men see her always determined to speak the truth, they gradually realize that she is not dangerous. And in his Presidential address to the Linnean Society, May 24, 1902, Professor S. H. Vines thus expressed himself as to the genealogical table of organic life, which ever since the doctrine of Evolution was accepted, it has been sought to construct: Though here and there fragments of the mosaic seem to have been successfully pieced together, the main outlines, even, of the great picture are as yet but dimly discernible. The fact that organic Evolution should have proceeded so far as it has within such limits of time as may reasonably be allowed, admits, to my mind, of no other interpretation than that variation is not indeterminate, but, as Lamarck and Nägeli have urged, there must exist in living matter a certain inherent tendency or bias in favour of variation in the higher direction. It is this tendency or bias that I venture to regard as the primordial factor. But it is precisely such an inherent tendency of organic life to develop on predetermined lines, which Darwinians and other advocates of Evolution by the agency of physical forces alone, vehemently repudiate as fatal to their whole system. [Since Professor Williamson wrote, the opinion has been adopted that for the very reason which induced him to place the Sharks above the _Cycloids_ and _Ctenoids_, their relative positions should be reversed. The Sharks being a more "generalized" type, with features more akin to those of land-dwelling reptiles, and the others more "specialized" for purely aquatic conditions, the latter, it is argued, are a higher evolutionary product. As a necessary corollary it is assumed that vertebrate life originated, not, as had been supposed, in the sea, but in swamps or lagoons on the shore-line. It must, however, remain a question how far the facility with which theories can thus be modified according to requirements, is calculated to inspire confidence in them.] XVII "AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM" We have heard Mr. Carruthers' declaration, based upon his survey of palæontological botany, "The whole evidence is against Evolution, and there is none in favour of it."