Professor Huxley seems now disposed to accept the, at least { 104} occasional, intervention of sudden and considerable variations. In his review of Professor Kölliker's[97] criticisms, he himself says,[98] "We greatly suspect that she" (_i.e._ Nature) "does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms."
[Illustration: MUCH ENLARGED HORIZONTAL SECTION OF THE TOOTH OF A LABYRINTHODON.]
In addition to the instances brought forward in the second chapter against the minute action of Natural Selection, may be mentioned such { 105} structures as the wonderfully folded teeth of the labyrinthodonts. The marvellously complex structure of these organs is not merely unaccountable as due to Natural "Selection," but its production by insignificant increments of complexity is hardly less difficult to comprehend.
Similarly the aborted index of the Potto (_Perodicticus_) is a structure not likely to have been induced by minute changes; while, as to "Natural Selection," the reduction of the fore-finger to a mere rudiment is inexplicable indeed! "How this mutilation can have aided in the struggle for life, we must confess, baffles our conjectures on the subject; for that any very appreciable gain to the individual can have resulted from the slightly lessened degree of required nourishment thence resulting (_i.e._ from the suppression), seems to us to be an almost absurd proposition."[99]
[Illustration: HAND OF THE POTTO (PERODICTICUS), FROM LIFE.]
Again, to anticipate somewhat, the great group of whales (Cetacea) was fully developed at the deposition of the Eocene strata. On the other hand, we may pretty safely conclude that these animals were absent as late as the latest secondary rocks, so that their development could not have been so very slow, unless geological time is (although we shall presently see there are grounds to believe it is not) practically infinite. It is quite true that it is, in general, very unsafe to infer the absence of any animal forms during a certain geological period, because no remains of them { 106} have as yet been found in the strata then deposited: but in the case of the Cetacea it is safe to do so; for, as Sir Charles Lyell remarks,[100] they are animals, the remains of which are singularly likely to have been preserved had they existed, in the same way that the remains were preserved of the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, which appear to have represented the Cetacea during the secondary geological period.