In what the newspapers described as an "admirable speech," he
refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had "only
to make a journey of twelve hours from the place where he was then
standing to find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum,
the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston,
declared: "These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed
the work of a lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by
saying: "Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with
you; get down and look at them. This is the watch that was under
the steam hammer--the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hammer
is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds." Exhibitions like
these availed little. While the good bishop amid vociferous
applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz was a
Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
evolution by natural selection.
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