We are told that a high development began earlier than was thought; the longer we live the older do we find the world. At one time it was thought the waterformed rocks were but a thin crust, yet in Britain we have already nearly fourteen miles thick of such strata, and some of them are but very thin, while on the continent again these very beds are many thousand feet thick; whole mountains of them may have been engulfed by the devouring seas. Hence, says Mr. Darwin, "we have no right to expect to find in our geological formations an infinite number of these fine transitional forms which in my theory have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life;" hence, too, he argues we ought not to consider the abrupt appearance of species as Agassiz, Pictet and Sedgwick think it is, a fatal objection to his theory.

We are also told that great fishes and reptiles appeared on the theatre of life long before the time generally assigned to them. Reptiles of the land belong to coal measures and sandstone, although till quite lately the days of the permian strata, much nearer our time, were assigned as their starting point. Twenty-five years ago it was affirmed that fish had not been found before the time of the coal measures; now they are traced back to the Llandeilo flags. The old red sandstone was at one time thought to contain few remains of life; Miller after ten years of labour showed that it was full of fossils. One true mammal has been discovered in the new red sandstone at nearly the commencement of this great series. However early we begin we find the first children of the monads the fishes, not rudely formed, shapeless, senseless, help

less lumps of jelly and cartilage, but powerful, large, well formed and crafty. One of the very oldest fish yet discovered had a defensive spine the fragment of which is more than twice the size of the largest spine. entire of the Port Jackson shark; the dog-fish which represent such an early order are crafty in the extreme. The later classes of fish contain far more instances of monstrosity not only from defect as in the eels, but also from misplacement as in the flounder, plaice, turbot, &c., than the old Silurian fishes; the relative positions of the skull, neck, and parts corresponding to the fore and hind limbs and the tail are far more symmetrical in these very old fishes than in the more modern ones. Quite in the beginning, in the early times of the coal measures, we meet with noble trees of true wood; in the lower old red sandstone, in the days of that very early fish the Asterolepis, we find wood fossils at a time when Brongniart would have us believe that there was nothing better to be looked for than a moss or a lichen. "In the middle of this vast ocean," says Hugh Miller, "just where the last zone of the old red leans against the first zone of the silurian, we have succeeded in discovering a solitary island unseen before—a shrub-bearing land, much enveloped in fog, but with hills that at least look green in the distance."

Furthermore, a high order of fish is not only succeeded by a low order of reptiles, but the warm-blooded animals which appear when the dynasty of the reptile is about to pass away for ever are of a low grade.† This cannot be denied, but Mr. Darwin's supporters

The Onchus Murchisoni.

+ See Appendix 17.

can, I suppose, explain it away by showing that the survivor had some "slight advantage" over its rivals.

For my part, so far as proof and possibility are concerned, I can scarcely see that Mr. Darwin's theory stands on a much firmer basis than many very beautiful and untenable theories which have been warmly accepted and powerfully defended; which were grand and philosophic, complete and perfect, and which wanted but one thing-an unbroken chain of proofs. Such was the nebular theory till some of the facts on which it rested were shattered by the revelations of the wonderful Rosse telescope; such was the development theory about which Oken made those profound observations, showing how the sea organisms by self-elevation succeeded in attaining into form, and who asserted that without doubt life began in India, though Scotland had a stately flora ages and ages before the Himalayas rose from the ocean; and such, after the fashion of its day, was the theory of a first creation of " Animals of disproportionate parts and of absurd and uncouth shapes," which Ray set himself to dispute more than a century ago.

Sir Charles Lyell most justly objects to the view that there has been a steady development since the beginning of life upon the globe. Dr. Hooker, he says, observes in his recent introductory essay on the Flora of Australia that it is impossible to establish a parallel between the successive appearances of vegetable forms in time and their complexity of structure or specialization of organs, as represented by the successively higher groups in the natural method of classification.*

See Appendix 18.

To show how much in this theory depends upon suppositions, let the reader examine the following passage, which I have scored pretty freely with italics, and see if I have coloured the statement. "Let us," says Mr. Darwin, "take the case of a wolf which preys on various animals, securing some by craft, some by strength, and some by fleetness; and let us suppose that the fleetest prey, a deer for instance, had by any change in the country increased in numbers, or that other prey had decreased in numbers during that season of the year when the wolf is hardest pressed for food, under such circumstances the swiftest and slimmest wolves would have the best chance of surviving, and so be preserved or selected, provided always that they retained strength to master their prey at this or at some other season of the year, when they might be compelled to prey on other animals. I can see no more reason to doubt this, than that man can improve the fleetness of his greyhounds by careful and methodical selection, or by that unconscious selection which results from each man trying to keep the best dogs without any thought of modifying the breed."

"Even without any change in the proportional numbers of the animals on which our wolf preyed, a cub might be born with an innate tendency to pursue certain kinds of prey. Nor can this be thought very improbable, for we often observe great differences in the natural tendencies of our domestic animals; one cat, for instance, taking to catch rats, another mice; one cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing home winged game, another hares or rabbits, and another hunting on marshy ground and almost

nightly catching woodcocks or snipes. The tendency to catch rats rather than mice is known to be inherited. Now, if any slight innate change of habit or structure benefit an individual wolf, it would have the best chance of surviving and leaving offspring. Some of its young would probably inherit the same habits or structure, and by the repetition of this process a new variety would be formed which would either supplant or coexist with the present fancy wolf. Again, the wolves inhabiting a mountainous district, and those frequenting the lowlands, would naturally be forced to hunt different prey, and from the continued preservation of the individuals best fitted for the two sites, two varieties would slowly be formed. These two varieties would cross and blend when they met, but to this subject of intercrossing we shall soon have to return. I may add that according to Mr. Pierce there are two varieties of the wolf inhabiting the Catskill Mountains in the United States, one with a light greyhoundlike form, which pursues deer, and the other more bulky, with shorter legs, which now more frequently attacks the shepherd's flocks." Of course the reader will at once see that these two varieties were not created to feed upon their peculiar kinds of prey, but that they were selected in this much easier manner.