Darwin, with his usual candor, virtually admits to be unanswerable. We have already seen, that he says, "Every one will admit that the geological record is imperfect; but very few can believe that it is so very imperfect as my theory demands." Such are some of the grounds on which geologists and palaeontologists of the highest rank assert that the theory of evolution has not the slightest scientific basis; and they support their assertion with an amount of evidence of which the above items are a miserable pittance. Sixthly. There is another consideration of decisive importance. Strauss says, there are three things which have been stumbling-blocks in the way of science. First, the origin of life; second, the origin of consciousness; third, the origin of reason. These are equivalent to the gaps which, Principal Dawson says, exist in the theory of evolution. He states them thus: 1. That between dead and living matter. 2. That between vegetable and animal life. "These are necessarily the converse of each other: the one deoxidizes and accumulates, the other oxidizes and expends." 3. That "between any species of plant or animal, and any other species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and another species." 4. "Another gap is between the nature of the animal and the self-conscious, reasoning, and moral nature of man." (pp. 325-328)