Must an evolutionist take, when the earliest, most reliable news
Of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals does not
Follow in the wake of the transitional forms that plot
The emergence of one Class from another? - when fossils tell him
That the Phyla, Classes and Orders erupted to quell him,
Radiant and blooming like Venus from the foam, clothed
In her finery of species and genera, with no part unclothed
Contriving to live and compete with organs in transition? -
When palaeontologists make the logical submission
That life-forms, unheralded, be boldly coloured like a Titian?
Taking as his cue any hint of homology¹ to press
From fragmentary evidence proof of trends nonetheless,
He rides into the sunset on a form of progressive giantism,
The Eohippus to Equus sequence, where he ignores the schism
In the Merychippus/Pliohippus synod, when three toes united
Abruptly and grazers’ teeth tried browsing mitres -
When rising numbers of ribs suffered reverses -
When therefore it was claimed the supreme ancestor precurses
The hyrax it resembles, a ride for cowboys discredited. -
So any descendant for a skin-deep lineage can be fitted
By interpreting the fossils to match the foregone conclusion
That an ancestor must exist.
Bertie: Will never his attribution
Of primate ancestry on fragmentary evidence collapse?
Jeeves: Hugging his own preconceptions, he will plead the gaps
And tomorrow’s clincher. But the fossils themselves mock
That hope by the scarcity of ‘transitional’ forms and the stock