"The terminology which has been introduced in the innumerable monographs of special fossil faunas in the majority of cases makes only the slenderest pretext of any connection with recent systematic zoology; if there is a difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis of a solution. Zoological students are, as a rule, too actively engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions arrived at by many stratigraphers, or to revise their labors from a zoological point of view."[38]
Doubtless this scathing impeachment of the common mania for creating new names for the fossils has especial reference to the case of the lower forms of life. For if, in spite of the brilliant and withal careful work of Cuvier, Owen, Wallace, Huxley, Ray Lankester, and Leith Adams, with numerous others that might be mentioned, there are still grounds for such grave doubts of the values of specific distinctions in the case of the mammals, whose general anatomy and life-history are so well known and their almost countless variations so well studied out, what must be the confusion and inaccuracy in the case of the lower vertebrates, and especially of the invertebrates, whose general life-history in so many instances is so dimly understood, and the limits of their variations absolutely unknown? Remembering all this, what is our amazement when we read in this same volume by Professor Zittel[39] that the tendency among many modern writers in dealing with these lower forms of life, is toward the erection of the closest possible distinctions between genera and species, until recent palaeontological literature is fairly inundated with new names; and all this with the purpose, unblushingly avowed, of "enhancing the value" of such distinctions as a means of determining the relative ages of strata, and to "bring the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development" of the various forms "into more apparent correspondence." I do not exaggerate in the least, as the reader may see by referring to Zittel's book; though not wishing to make my readers "spell through" another quite technical paragraph I have refrained from direct quotation.
But surely we have here a most amazing style of reasoning. It is another clear case of first assuming one's premises, and then proving them by means of one's conclusion. The method here employed seems about like this: First assume the succession of life from the low to the high as a whole; then in any particular group, as of Brachiopods or Mollusks, decide the momentous question as to which came first and which later in "geological time" by comparing them as to size, shape, etc., with the live modern individual in its development from the egg to maturity; and lastly, take the results of this alleged chronological arrangement to prove just how the modern forms have evolved. Surely it is a most fearful example of otherwise intelligent men being hypnotized by their theory into blind obedience to its suggestions and necessities.
Not long ago I had occasion to write to a well-known geologist about a Lower Cambrian mollusk which appears strikingly like a modern species. I give below an extract from his reply which bears directly upon this point. I withhold the name, for the information was given in a half-confidential manner, but I may say that the author's work on the Palaeozoic fossils is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic.
"Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all forms found in the Palaeozoic rocks, i.e. a name different from those of modern species. I was taken to task by a noted palaeontologist for finding a pupa (a kind of land snail) in Devonian beds; but I could not find any point in which it differed from the modern genus [? species]. Yet if I could have had more perfect specimens I might have found differences."
Such disclosures speak volumes for those able to understand; and lead one to receive with a smile the familiar assertion that all the species of the Palaeozoic and other "older" rocks are extinct. And we can now form a truer estimate of the high scientific accuracy of Lyell's ingenious division of the Tertiary beds, according to the percentage of living or extinct Mollusks which they contain.
But from the inherent weakness of the argument about extinct species as thus revealed, it follows that chronological distinctions based on any proportionate number of extinct species have absolutely no scientific value; and hence that the life succession theory finds no support from these chronological distinctions, just as we have already seen that it is without a vestige of support from the stratigraphical argument.
The life succession theory has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination.