[9] Like the ingenious author of the "Origin of Species," Miss
Phantasia appears to have convinced herself that the time would
come when the absence or rarity of intermediate species, the
great stumbling-block in the grand Darwinian theory, would no
longer have to be accounted for negatively by the "poorness of
our palæontalogical collections," and the "imperfectness of the
genealogical record." Bacon, though apparently familiar with, and
not averse to, Mr. Darwin's theory of evolution, does not seem to
follow the doctrine out in its application to the human race. How many
errors remain to be eradicated, even in minds of the highest order,
through man's adopted notion that he stands exclusively apart from
all his natural surroundings, both in degree and in kind!