CONNECTING AND MISSING LINKS IN THE ASCENT TO MAN
By Richard Swann Lull
Professor of Palaeontology, Yale University
Two truths impress themselves strongly upon the mind of the student of animals, first, the continuity of life, and second, the immensity of time during which that continuity has endured. Our conviction of the continuity of life is justified by an overwhelming host of facts, obtained in part from observation of existing creatures, in part from the study of the geologic record. The evidence of the continuous succession of living forms is conclusive to modern scientists, having in mind, as they do, the classic experiments of Spallanzani, Redi, Tyndal, and Pasteur, which proved, apparently beyond the possibility of dispute, that all life is derived from preëxisting life. The evidence afforded by the fossil record, on the other hand, does not at first sight seem so convincing, for the absence of certain “missing links” in the chain of life is striking. Were the tale a short one, the apparent gaps in the record would be of greater relative moment, but, in view of the great length of the revealed story they become comparatively insignificant.
These gaps are in reality comparable to missing pages in an ancient and partly mutilated volume, which, although their absence surely mars the perfection of the whole, it nevertheless cannot destroy our understanding of the story that is told if we possess the imagination of the historian or
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