. God's two books; or, Plain facts about evolution, geology, and the Bible . never been surpassed, perhaps never equaled, since, andhe is generally admitted to have been the greatest naturalistand comparative anatomist of that, or perhaps of any time;yet he maintained most positively that all those which wenow call the Pleistocene mammals were distinct species fromthe modern ones; and it is only in recent years and withextreme reluctance that many of them have been admittedto be identical with the ones now living. This shows howutterly unsafe it is to trust to the current assertions aboutall t
. God's two books; or, Plain facts about evolution, geology, and the Bible . never been surpassed, perhaps never equaled, since, andhe is generally admitted to have been the greatest naturalistand comparative anatomist of that, or perhaps of any time;yet he maintained most positively that all those which wenow call the Pleistocene mammals were distinct species fromthe modern ones; and it is only in recent years and withextreme reluctance that many of them have been admittedto be identical with the ones now living. This shows howutterly unsafe it is to trust to the current assertions aboutall the Mesozoic and Paleozoic species being extinct; foreven now, in spite of all that we have learned about thesurprising possibilities of variation, little or no allowancefor the potent influences of a changed environment seemsever to be made when the fossil forms are being are not all physiological species that can be separatedas morphological species, and the skeleton, often only afragment of it, is all that we have to depend upon in the 128 GODS TWO BOOKS. KARL ZITTEL (1839-1904) Late Professor of Geology and Paleontology in the University ofMunich; Director of the Natural History Museum of Munich, etc. One of the greatest of modern geologists. He was a candid rea-soner, indulged in no fantastic speculations, and did not believein calling a thing a scientific fact until it is established beyondquestion. His History of Geology is the best work we havedealing with the strange history of this science. GODS TWO BOOKS 129 case of the fossils. If the numerous varieties of the do-mestic dog were all extinct and known to us only as fossils,we would doubtless not only have a dozen new specificnames invented immediately, but such extreme types as pugand greyhound, St. Bernard and Scotch terrier, might evenbe erected into distinct genera; and, of course, they wouldall have to be arranged in single file, to show their geo-logical succession in time. Zittel gives us a peep
Size: 1431px × 1745px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectreligionandscience
