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VESTIGES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY 
 
 CKEATION. 
 
 Bqmnt of Start) lEtrition. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET, SOHO. 
 
 MDCCCXLVII. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
Cr 
 IW 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE BODIES OF SPACE THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION L 
 
 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH, AND OF THE OTHER 
 
 BODIES OF SPACE 16 
 
 THE EARTH FORMED GEOLOGICAL CHANGES 25 
 
 LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN FORMATIONS FIB8T FORMS OF 
 
 LIFE 29 
 
 DEVONIAN ERA FISHES ABUNDANT 35 
 
 CARBONIGENOUS ERA COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS . . 42 
 
 PERMIAN ERA FIRST TRACES OF REPTILES 50 
 
 ERA OF THE TRIAS AND OOLITE REPTILES ABUNDANT FIRST 
 
 TRACES OF BIRDS AND MAMMALIA 54 
 
 CRETACEOUS ERA 69 
 
 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION MAMMALIA ABUNDANT . 74 
 
 ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS EXISTING SPECIFIC 
 
 FORMS ABUNDANT 81 
 
 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE 
 
 ANIMATED TRIBES . . 8tf 
 
 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF 
 
 THE ANIMATED TRIBES . 99 
 
 551 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETABLE AND 
 
 ANIMAL KINGDOMS 112 
 
 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS 147 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND 211 
 
 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS 236 
 
 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREA- 
 TION 255 
 
 NOTE CONCLUSORY 274 
 
 NOTES . , 279 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 Page 56, last line for " four," read " fore." 
 
THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 
 
 IT is familiar knowledge that the earth which we inhabit is 
 a globe of somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being 
 one of a series of eleven which revolve at different distances 
 around the sun, and some of which have satellites in like 
 manner revolving around them. The sun, planets, and satel- 
 lites, with the less intelligible orbs termed comets, are com- 
 prehensively called the solar system ; and if we take as the 
 uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus (though 
 the comets actually have a wider range), we shall find that it 
 occupies a portion of space not less than three thousand six 
 hundred millions of miles in diameter. The mind fails to 
 form an exact notion of a portion of space so immense ; but 
 some faint idea of it may be obtained from the fact, that, if 
 the swiftest race-horse ever known had begun to traverse it, 
 at full speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he would 
 as yet have accomplished only half his journey. 
 
 It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the 
 stars, though they appear to our eyes only as brilliant points, 
 are all to be considered as suns, representing so many solar 
 systems, each bearing a general resemblance to our own. 
 The stars have a brilliancy and apparent magnitude which 
 we may safely presume to be in proportion to their actual 
 size and the distance at w r hich they are placed from us. 
 Attempts have been made to ascertain the distance in some 
 
2 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 instances by calculations founded on parallax; that is, the 
 change of relative situation produced on a heavenly object by 
 our planet passing from one part of its orbit to another ex- 
 actly opposite ; it being previously understood that if, upon 
 this base of nearly two hundred millions of miles, an angle of 
 so much as one second, or the 3600th part of a degree, could 
 be raised, the distance might be assumed in that instance 
 as not less than 19,200,000 millions of miles! In the 
 case of the most brilliant star, Sirius, even this minute 
 parallax could not be found ; from which, of course, it was to 
 be inferred that the distance of that star is something beyond 
 the vast distance which has been stated. In some others, on 
 which the experiment has been tried, no sensible parallax 
 could be detected ; from which the same inference was to 
 be made in their case. We seemed thus to be left in a hope- 
 less state of ignorance regarding the measurements of the 
 sidereal unijyerse, as if it were such a question as man was 
 not destined ever to answer ; but at length, in our own time, 
 responses came from several points almost at once. By Pro- 
 fessor Henderson, it was ascertained that the star a of the 
 constellation of the Centaur, the third in brightness in our 
 heavens, but in reality a double star, and believed for various 
 reasons to be among those nearest to us, had a parallax of a 
 full second, from which it was inferred that the distance 
 was the vast sum of miles which has been stated. Afterwards, 
 Bessel assigned a parallax of thirty one hundredths of a 
 second to the double star 61 Cygni, placing it at a distance 
 nearly 670,000 times that of the sun.(') Such are but the 
 first steps we take in imagination amongst the hosts of orbs 
 by which we are surrounded. If we suppose that similar 
 intervals exist between all the stars, we shall readily see that 
 the space occupied by even the comparatively small number 
 visible to the naked eye must be vast beyond all powers of 
 human conception. 
 
 The number visible to the eye is about three thousand ; 
 but when a telescope of small power is directed to the 
 heavens, a great number more come into view, and the 
 number is ever increased in proportion to the increased power 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. d 
 
 of the instrument. In one place, where they are more thickly 
 sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that 
 fifty thousand passed over a field of view two degrees in 
 hreadth in a single hour. It was first surmised by the ancient 
 philosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which 
 spans the sky under the name of the Milky Way, might be 
 only a dense collection of stars too remote to be distinguished. 
 This conjecture has been verified by the instruments of mo- 
 dern astronomers, and some speculations of a most remark- 
 able kind have been formed in connexion with it. By the 
 joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been "gauged" 
 in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the condi- 
 tions of different parts with respect to the frequency of stars. 
 The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are parts 
 of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be 
 called Astral Systems that is, systems composed of a multi- 
 tude of stars, bearing a certain relation to eaclT other. The 
 astral system to which we belong 1 , is conceived to be of an ob- 
 long, flattish form, with a space wholly or comparatively 
 vacant in the centre, while the extremity in one direction 
 parts into two. The stars are most thickly sown in the outer 
 parts of this vast ring, and these constitute the Milky Way. 
 Our sun is believed to be placed in the southern portion of the 
 ring, near its inner edge, so that we are presented with many 
 more stars, and see the Milky Way much more clearly, in 
 that direction, than towards the north, in which line our eye 
 has to traverse the vacant central space. Nor is this all. A 
 motion of our solar system with respect to the stars, first 
 suggested by Sir William Herschel, in 1783, has since been 
 verified by the exact calculations of M. Argelander, late 
 director of the Observatory at Abo. The sun is proceeding 
 towards a point in the constellation Hercules. It is, therefore, 
 receding from the inner edge of the ring. Motions of this 
 kind, through such vast regions of space, must be long in 
 producing any change sensible to the inhabitants of our 
 planet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character ; but 
 grounds have nevertheless been found for supposing that not 
 only our sun, but the other suns of the system, pursue a wavy 
 
 B2 
 
4 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 course round the ring, from west to east, crossing and recross- 
 ing the middle of the annular circle. " Some stars will de- 
 part more, others less, from either side of the circumference of 
 equilibrium, according to the places in which they are situ- 
 ated, and according to the direction and the velocity with 
 which they are put in motion. Our sun is probably one of 
 those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest into 
 the empty space within the ring."( 8 ) According to this 
 view, a time may come when we shall be much more in the 
 thick of the stars of our astral system than we are now, and 
 have of course much more brilliant nocturnal skies ; but it 
 may be countless ages before the eyes which are to see this 
 added resplendence shall exist. 
 
 The evidence of the existence of other astral systems 
 is much more decided than might be expected, when we 
 consider that the nearest of them must needs be placed at a 
 mighty interval beyond our own. The elder Herschel, di- 
 recting his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system, 
 where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the powers 
 of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with 
 awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean 
 astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling 
 our own. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the 
 telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, 
 into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the 
 finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these 
 systems (nebulce) are various. So also are the distances, as 
 proved by the different degrees of telescopic power necessary 
 to bring them into view. The furthest observed by the astro- 
 nomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times 
 more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about 
 twenty millions of millions of miles. 
 
 More recently, the Earl of Bosse has brought his superb 
 instruments to bear upon these distant objects, and thus re- 
 vealed them in more wondrous forms than before. Many 
 which Herschel saw only as filmy matter, spread in patches 
 over the sky, are now found to be vast aggregations of stars. 
 Many which to the elder philosopher seemed round and well 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. O 
 
 defined, are seen by his successor to have branches starting 
 out in different directions filaments, as he calls them, the 
 language applicable, to the smallest of objects examined in 
 our hands, being thus found applicable to the promontories 
 of those great continents, each atom of which may be said to 
 be millions of miles removed from another. 
 
 Such is the universe, as developed to the perceptions of the 
 modern philosopher different indeed from that of our fore- 
 fathers, who did not know the bounds even of this little world, 
 and beheld in the sun, moon, and stars only a set of menial 
 lights ordained, usefully or not, to attend it. And to such con- 
 templations are we raised by modern science, if we choose to 
 leave for them the strifes and self-seekings of our social scene. 
 Thinking of such acquisitions of knowledge, one cannot but 
 go warmly along with the living Herschel when he speaks of 
 the discoveries of Struve, Bessel, and Henderson, as among 
 the fairest flowers of civilization. They surely justify, as 
 he says, " the vast expenditure of time and talent which have 
 led up to them," and show that " there are yet behind not only 
 secrets of nature which shall increase the wealth and power 
 of man, but TRUTHS which shall ennoble the age and the country 
 in which they are divulged, and by dilating the intellect, 
 re-act on the moral character of mankind." ( 3 ) 
 
 Where our perceptive faculties are baffled, we dream ; where 
 they compass their object, w r e inquire after cause. Such is 
 a law of our minds, which cannot have been bestowed upon 
 us without being designed for a good end. And, indeed, it is 
 by experience placed beyond all doubt, that to yield to this 
 impulse is to use a direct means of improving our condition 
 on earth, and to advance in the scale of moral as well as in- 
 tellectual being. Nor are we left to doubt that extensions of 
 knowledge, either in simple fact or in cause and relation, are 
 not to be estimated by their immediate and apparent effects ; 
 for both are there often good results of the most tangible kind 
 where no such thing was expected as from Napier's disco- 
 very of the logarithms, or, to take an opposite instance, from 
 Smith's ascertainment of the supra-position of rocks and it is 
 utterly impossible in any way to reckon the benefits which 
 
6 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 light confers upon mind wherever it is allowed to enter. As- 
 suming, then, the legitimacy of such inquiries, and yet hold- 
 ing by the reverence which Created owes to Creating, we may 
 without fear yield to the instinct which sends us to ask after 
 cause with regard to this vast and beauteous scene. How 
 has it been that these orby myriads have taken the places in 
 which we find them ? To what authorship are we to ascribe 
 the whole ? 
 
 In philosophising, the prime difficulty is to bring down the 
 mind to sufficiently simple conceptions. Many can soar 
 and mystify, and come to nothing ; to few is it given to find 
 truth where it usually lies, amongst the things most familiar. 
 The ideas which the ancients formed of the movements of the 
 heavenly bodies were lofty, but utterly false. It was re- 
 served for the geometers of the last two centuries, by pursuing 
 truth on more solid grounds, to establish the simplicity which 
 is now known to extend through the physical constitution of 
 the universe. It has been fully ascertained that the planets 
 have obtained their forms, keep their places with regard to 
 the sun and to each other, and pursue all their various mo- 
 tions, in obedience to certain laws which are to be every day 
 seen acting on the humblest scale in our very presence. Thus, 
 the earth is a globe for the same reason that a dew-drop is 
 so. It is slightly flattened at the poles, as a consequence of 
 rotation on an axis when in a soft state, for the same reason 
 that a mass of clay whirled rapidly round will become of 
 a similar shape. The sun and earth are mutually attracted 
 in proportion to their respective masses, and inversely as 
 the square of the distance, which is a law prevailing with 
 not less certainty upon two rose leaves floating on the 
 summer lake into which they have fallen. The revolution 
 of the planet or satellite in an orbit round a central mass 
 is, again, the result of a composition of two opposite 
 forces one of them this attraction of gravity in its proper 
 proportions, the other a primitive motion of the one mass 
 away from the other in a straight line ; and this phenomenon 
 is exemplified when we see a stone which has been thrown 
 from a boy's hand, brought in a curve to the ground. All 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 7 
 
 these marvels rest on mathematical calculations of the nicest 
 exactness, insomuch that, taking one as an example, astrono- 
 mers have computed ten years beforehand, the time at which 
 the planet Jupiter would pass our meridian, and the predicted 
 time was correct within half a second. 
 
 Since Xewton stated the laws of gravity and of the pla- 
 netary motions, there have been some important additions to 
 his philosophy. It has been shown, that certain perturbations in 
 the planetary movements, which appeared to him as denoting 
 a necessary end to the system, observe periods, and are only 
 further proofs of the stability of the whole arrangement. It has 
 also been discovered that the laws of motion extend beyond 
 the solar system. Amongst the serene orbs, which seem so 
 still to our ordinary perceptions, we now know that there is 
 no such thing as rest. Stars are ascertained to have proper 
 motions, of the same nature with that found in our own sun. 
 Many are seen to be, in reality, double or triple that is, com- 
 posed of a plurality of suns, which perform regular revolution- 
 ary motions around each other in ellipses. The periods of 
 some of these movements and revolutions are of such brevity, 
 that their elements are already in the book of the astronomer ; 
 others are seen to be of such vastness, that the times which have 
 determinated the youth and death of our oldest empires, would 
 be, in the comparison, but as a little spoke in some enormous 
 wheel. Yet of all of them no doubt can be entertained that 
 they depend upon those simple physical laws which preside 
 over every particle of tangible matter in our own sphere. 
 
 Here it is right to advert to some general features of the 
 solar system, most of which have also been discovered since 
 the days of Xewton. It is, in the first place, remarkable, 
 that the planets all move nearly in one plane, corresponding 
 with the centre of the sun's body. Xext, it is not less worthy 
 of attention, that the motion of the sun on its axis, those of 
 the planets around the sun, and the satellites around their 
 primaries, ( 4 ) and the motions of all on their axes, are in one 
 direction namely, from w r est to east. Had all these matters 
 been left to accident, the chances against the uniformity 
 would have been, though calculable, inconceivably great. 
 
8 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 Of the forty-three motions ascertained in the early part of 
 this century, it was found by Laplace, that the adverse 
 chances were as upwards of four millions of millions to one. 
 It is thus powerfully impressed on us that the uniformity of 
 the motions, as well as their general adjustment to one plane, 
 must have been a consequence of a single cause acting through- 
 out the whole system. 
 
 Some of the other relations of the bodies are not less re- 
 markable. It is, perhaps, of little consequence that the larger 
 planets are towards the outside of the system, since there is 
 an absence of regularity in the gradation in this respect. In 
 the series of comparative densities we find an approach to a 
 regular gradation : they stand thus in decimals, the Earth being 
 considered as 1 Mercury, 2*95 ; Venus, '99 ; Earth 1 ; 
 Mars, -79 ; Jupiter, -23 ; Saturn, -11 ; Uranus, -26 ; the last 
 being the only very decided violation of the rule. Then the 
 distances are curiously relative. It has been found that, if 
 we place the following line of numbers, 
 
 03 6 12 24 48 96 192 
 and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the re- 
 spective distances of the planets from the sun. It will stand 
 thus 
 
 4 7 10 16 28 52 100 196 
 Merc. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. 
 
 It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from 
 the second on the left hand in a succession of duplications, or 
 multiplications by 2. Surely there is here a most surprising 
 proof of unity in the solar system. It was remarked, when 
 this relation was first detected, that there was the want of a 
 planet corresponding to 28 ; the difficulty was afterwards 
 considered as overcome, by the discovery of four small planets 
 revolving at nearly one mean distance from the sun, between 
 Mars and Jupiter.( 5 ) The distances bear an equally interest- 
 ing mathematical relation to the times of the revolutions 
 round the sun. With respect to any two planets, the squares of 
 the times of revolutions are to each other in the same propor- 
 tion as the cubes of their mean distances, a most surprising 
 result, for the discovery of which the world was indebted to 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 9 
 
 the illustrious Kepler. Sir John Herschel truly observes 
 " When we contemplate the constituents of the planetary 
 system from the point of view which this relation affords us, 
 it is no longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a 
 general resemblance among them, as individuals independent 
 of each other, and circulating about the sun, each according 
 to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own 
 peculiar tie. The resemblance is now perceived to be a true 
 family likeness ; they are bound up in one chain interwoven 
 in one web of mutual relation and harmonious agreement, 
 subjected to one pervading influence, which extends from the 
 centre to the furthest limits of that great system, of which all 
 of them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as 
 members." ( 6 ) 
 
 The tendency of all the later discoveries has been to deepen 
 the conviction arising from the first, that the physical affairs 
 of the universe are under the regulation of laws ; the forms, the 
 distances, the movements, the inter- dependencies of the bodies 
 of space, are determined in this, and in no other more arbitrary 
 manner. And what does a law imply ? It is an arrange- 
 ment in which we see invariable uniformity and self-consis- 
 tency. In the case of these physical laws, we can bring it to 
 mathematical elements, and see that numbers, in the expres- 
 sion of space or of time, form, as it were, its basis. We thus 
 trace in law, Intelligence often we can see that it has a bene- 
 ficial object, still more strongly speaking of mind as con- 
 cerned in it. There cannot, however, be an inherent intelli- 
 gence in these laws ; we cannot conceive of mind actually 
 working in the agglomeration of a dew-drop or the orbitual 
 revolution of the moon. The intelligence appears external to 
 the laws ; something of which the laws are but as the expres- 
 sion of the Will and Power. If this be admitted, the laws 
 cannot be regarded as primary or independent causes of the 
 phenomena of the physical world. We come, in short, to 
 a Being beyond nature its author, its God ; infinite, in- 
 conceivable, it may be, and yet one whom these very laws 
 present to us with attributes showing that our nature is in 
 some way a faint and far-cast shadow of His, while all the 
 
10 THE BODIES OP SPACE, 
 
 gentlest and beautifullest of our emotions lead us to believe 
 that we are as children in his care, and as vessels in his hand. 
 We must consequently understand and this is for the 
 reader's special attention that when we speak of natural 
 law, we only speak of the mode in which the Divine Power 
 is exercised. It is but another phrase for the action of the 
 ever present and sustaining God. 
 
 Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but 
 the seeking of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. 
 The endeavour to explain any events in her history, however 
 grand or mysterious these may be, is only to sit like a child 
 at a mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things which passed 
 before we were born. In modesty and reverence, in the 
 spirit of the love of truth, and that craving of an innate help- 
 lessness which seems as if it could never be satisfied till it 
 knew all, we may even inquire if there be any trace of the 
 origin of that arrangement of the universe which is presented 
 to our notice. 
 
 In this inquiry, we start with the clear fact of the orbs 
 being determined in their forms by law. That law neces- 
 sarily infers a previous form of matter, one in which the mole- 
 cules were separately moveable fluid or gasiform just as the 
 law by which the dew-drop is spherified, implies that the 
 constituent particles were in such a condition before it took 
 effect. We thus see the Will which constitutes law acting 
 in a non-material manner in that portion of what we are ac- 
 customed to call Creation. In the places and relations of the 
 orbs, there is equal proof, though of a less popularly tangible 
 kind, that law was concerned. The work was done by the 
 will of God, expressed in the form of the law of gravitation. 
 When we corne to consider the motions, and regard them as 
 necessarily containing results of an impulse, we are apt to sup- 
 pose some immediate and more direct application of divine 
 power necessary ; but this cannot stand a second considera- 
 tion. We see the motions inextricably wrought up in rela- 
 tion with the magnitudes, as well as the arrangements ; a 
 totally different mode of their origin is therefore inconceiv- 
 able. Having, moreover, in gravitation a general source of 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 11 
 
 motion, and knowing in what various ways a motive power 
 may be applied, see, for a familiar example, the wheels of a 
 clock revolving under the influence of a weight, all difficulty 
 in supposing an actual origin of a natural kind for the motions 
 of the heavenly bodies vanishes, however obscure our notions 
 may remain as to the process concerned in the case. Thus 
 everything leads us to the belief that there was a previous 
 form of matter, the alteration of which into the present was 
 brought about in the manner of, though certainly not by any 
 self-dependent efficacy in, Natural Law. 
 
 At this point we might rest, for in the general conclusion 
 that the orbs were formed and arranged in such a manner, 
 enough has been gained for the present object. It is worth 
 while, however, to touch slightly on the ideas which have 
 passed through certain great minds with respect to the births 
 of these bodies. 
 
 The first idea of what has been called the nebular cos- 
 mogony arose with Sir William Herschel, in consequence of 
 the observations which he made regarding a class of heavenly 
 bodies, to which the appellation of nebula had been applied, 
 in reference to their cloud-like appearance. Some of these 
 bodies were ascertained, by a high telescopic power, to be 
 only astral systems like our own, placed at such a vast dis- 
 tance, that the individuality of the stars composing them was 
 lost to ordinary perceptions. Others resisted the highest 
 telescopic power which the astronomer applied, and, from 
 various considerations, he came to regard them as masses of 
 diffused luminous matter. In these he further discovered a 
 variety of appearances, marking what seemed a gradation of 
 characters, as if they had been in various degrees of conden- 
 sation ; and hence he was led to surmise that they were solar 
 systems in the process of being formed out of a previous con- 
 dition of matter. Laplace now stepped forward to show that, 
 if such a luminous matter existed, and if nuclei were esta- 
 blished in it, these might become centres of aggregation for 
 the neighbouring diffused matter ; on such centres a rotatory 
 motion would be established, wherever, as was the most likely 
 case, there was any obliquity in the lines of direction in 
 
12 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 which the opposing currents met each other: this motion 
 would increase as the agglomeration proceeded : at certain 
 intervals, the centrifugal force acting in the exterior of the 
 rotating mass would overcome the agglomerating force, and 
 a series of rings would thus be left apart, each possessing the 
 motion proper to itself at the crisis of separation. These, 
 again, could only continue in their annular form if uniform in 
 constitution. There being many chances against this, they 
 would probably break up, and be agglomerated into either 
 one or several masses, which would then become representa- 
 tives of the primary mass, and perhaps give rise to a similar 
 progeny of inferior masses. All this Laplace showed to be 
 possible under the physical laws of the universe, and he con- 
 ceived that such might be the actual history of all such 
 systems as ours, the four small planets between Mars and 
 Jupiter being an example of a ring which agglomerated into 
 distinct parts, and the rings of Saturn instances of satellites 
 which have not yet attained, if they ever will attain, the 
 ultimate form assigned to such bodies in general. 
 
 This hypothesis, it will be observed, only comes to the 
 point at which we must needs arrive under a consideration of 
 the " web of relation" traceable in the constituents of the solar 
 system namely, that they have had a common origin in a soft 
 and diffused form of matter. Such a form of matter may now, 
 as is alleged, be no longer actually seen in the heavens ; and 
 yet there may remain good reasons for believing that it once 
 existed. One of these will afterwards be presented in the 
 facts connected with the density of the planets and the internal 
 heat of the earth. As another, I may point to the curious 
 phenomenon called the zodiacal light, an oblate luminosity 
 surrounding the sun, and very conspicuous in the twilights of 
 tropical climes ; a remnant, as has been supposed, of the dif- 
 fused solar atmosphere of the nebular cosmogony. There is 
 even a support to the hypothesis in what would seem at first 
 to be an anomaly and an objection the existence of the 
 many binary and ternary solar systems. It may be supposed 
 that, at a certain point in the confluence of the matter of these 
 regions of space, the solar nuclei would become involved in 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 13 
 
 a common revolutionary motion, linked inextricably with 
 each other, though it might be at sufficient distances to allow 
 of each body having afterwards its attendant planets. Such a 
 phenomenon is occasionally realized to us on the surface of a 
 river flowing between irregular banks. There we not only 
 see single dimples rotating and passing onward, results of 
 that obliquity in the meeting of currents which is thought to 
 have set solar systems in motion, but often two or more of 
 these dynamic microcosms will come within a range of 
 mutual influence, and go on wheeling around each other. 
 These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes 
 watch abstractedly for an hour, little thinking of the laws 
 which produce and connect them, form an illustration of the 
 mechanism of binary and ternary stars, and bring an unex- 
 pected aid to a hypothesis of the history of the heavenly 
 spaces. 
 
 A remarkable approximation has also been made to what 
 may be called an experimental verification of this cosmogony, 
 by a living professor, M. Plateau, of Ghent. Divested of 
 technical terms, the experiment was nearly as follows : 
 Placing a mixture of water and alcohol in a glass box, and 
 therein a small quantity of olive oil of density precisely equal 
 to the mixture, we have in the latter a liquid mass relieved 
 from the operation of gravity, and free to take the exterior 
 form given by the forces which may act upon it. In point of 
 fact, the oil, by virtue of the law of molecular attraction, in- 
 stantly takes a globular form. A vertical axis being intro- 
 duced through the box, with a small disc upon it, so arranged 
 that its centre is coincident with the centre of the globe of 
 oil, we turn the axis at a slow rate, and thus set the oil-sphere 
 in rotation. " We then presently see the sphere flatten at 
 its poles and swell out at its equator, and thus realize on a small 
 scale an effect which is admitted to have taken place in the 
 planets." The spherifying forces are of different natures, that 
 of molecular attraction in the case of the oil, and of universal 
 attraction in that of the planet ; but the results are analogous, 
 if not identical. Quickening the rotation makes the figure 
 more oblately spheroidal. When it comes to be so quick as 
 
14 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 
 
 two or three turns in a second, " the liquid sphere first takes 
 rapidly its maximum of flattening, then becomes hollow 
 above and below around the axis of rotation, stretching out 
 continually in a horizontal direction, and finally, abandoning 
 the disc, is transformed into a perfectly regular ring" At 
 first, this remains connected with the disc by a thin pellicle of 
 oil ; which, however, on the disc being stopped, breaks and 
 disappears, and the ring then becomes completely disengaged. 
 The only observable difference between this ring and that of 
 Saturn, is that it is rounded, instead of being flattened ; but 
 this is accounted for by the learned professor in a satisfactory 
 way. 
 
 A little after the stoppage of the rotatory motion of the 
 disc, the ring of oil, losing its own motion, gathers once more 
 into a sphere. If, however, a smaller disc be used, and its 
 rotation continued after the separation of the ring, rotatory 
 motion and centrifugal force will be generated in the alcoholic 
 fluid, and the oil-ring, thus prevented from returning into the 
 globular form, divides itself into several isolated masses, each 
 of which immediately takes the globular form. These " are 
 almost always seen to assume, at the instant of their forma- 
 tion, a movement of rotation upon themselves, a movement 
 which constantly takes place in the same direction as that of 
 the ring. Moreover, as the ring, at the instant of its rupture, 
 had still a remainder of velocity, the spheres to which it has 
 given birth tend to fly off at a tangent ; but, as on the other 
 hand, the disc, turning in the alcoholic fluid, has impressed on 
 this a movement of rotation, the spheres are especially carried 
 along by this last movement, and revolve for some time round 
 the disc. Those which revolve at the same time upon them- 
 selves, consequently then present the curious spectacle of 
 planets revolving at the same time upon themselves and in their 
 orbits. Finally besides three or four large spheres into 
 which the ring resolves itself, there are almost always pro- 
 duced one or two very small ones, which may thus be 
 compared to satellites. The experiment presents, as we 
 see, an image in miniature of the formation of the planets, 
 according to the hypothesis of Laplace, by the rupture 
 
THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 15 
 
 of the cosmical rings attributable to the condensation of the 
 solar atmosphere." ( 7 ) It must of course be admitted that the 
 process of the experiment was of a reverse kind, and at- 
 tended, as far as M. Plateau's description informs us, by 
 slightly various effects ; but the general reflection which it 
 gives of Laplace's cosmogony is certainly such as to confer 
 upon that hypothesis a strong probability. 
 
 To conclude this section of the history. What we see is 
 a boundless multitude of bodies with vast empty spaces 
 between. We know of certain motions amongst these bodies ; 
 of other and grander translations we are only beginning to 
 get some knowledge. Beside this idea of locality and move- 
 ment, we have the equally certain one of a former soft and 
 more diffused state of the materials of these bodies ; also a 
 tolerably clear one as to gravitation having been the deter- 
 mining cause of both locality and movement. To no other 
 conclusion, as it appears to me, can these various ideas lead, 
 than to that of universal space being formerly occupied with 
 gasiform matter ; this, however, of irregular constitution, so 
 that gravitation caused it to break up and gather into patches, 
 producing at once the relative localities of astral and solar 
 systems, and the movements which they have since observed, 
 in themselves and with regard to each other, from the daily 
 spinning of single bodies on ideal axles, to the mazy dances 
 of vast families of orbs, which come to periods only in millions 
 of years. How grand, yet how simple the whole of this pro- 
 cess for a God only to conceive and do, and yet for man, 
 after all, to trace out and ponder upon. Oh, truly must we 
 be in some way immediate to the august Father, who can 
 think all this, and so come into his presence and council, 
 albeit only to fall prostrate and mutely adore ! 
 
16 
 
 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH, 
 
 AND OP THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 
 
 THE orbs being all inextricably connected in the manner 
 which has been described, are we also to presume that the 
 constitution of the whole is uniform ? that is to say, do the 
 whole consist of the same chemical elements ? 
 
 What are elements ? This is a term applied by the chemist 
 to a limited number of substances, (fifty-five are ascer- 
 tained,) which, in their combinations, form all the matters 
 present in and about our globe. They are called elements, 
 or simple substances, because it has hitherto been found 
 impossible to reduce them into others, wherefore they are 
 presumed to be the primary bases of all matters. It has, 
 indeed, been surmised that these so-called elements are only 
 modifications of a primordial form of matter, brought about 
 under certain conditions ; but if this should prove to be the 
 case, it would little affect the present speculations. Analogy 
 would lead us to conclude that the modifications of the 
 primordial matter, forming our so-called elements, are as 
 universal, or as liable to take place everywhere, as are the 
 laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. It therefore ap- 
 pears likely that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other 
 simple substances, (besides whatever more of which we have 
 no acquaintance,) exist under proper conditions, as well in 
 the astral system which is thirty-five thousand times more 
 
CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH. 17 
 
 distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar 
 system or our own globe. 
 
 Matter, whether it consists of about fifty-five ingredients, 
 or only one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under 
 different influences. As a familiar illustration, water, when 
 subjected to a temperature under 32 Fahrenheit, becomes 
 ice ; raise the temperature to 212, and it becomes steam, oc- 
 cupying a vast deal more space than it formerly did. The 
 gases, when subjected to pressure, become liquids ; for ex- 
 ample, carbonic acid gas, when subjected to weight equal to 
 a column of water 1230 feet high, at a temperature of 32, 
 takes this form : the other gases require various amounts of 
 pressure for this transformation, but all appear to be liable to 
 it when the pressure proper in each case is administered. 
 Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating the volume 
 and other conditions of matter. The chemist will probably 
 yet tell us what additional amount of heat would be required 
 to vaporize all the water of our globe ; how much more to 
 disengage the oxygen which is diffused in nearly a proportion 
 of one-half throughout its solids ; and, finally, how much 
 more would be required to cause the whole to become vapori- 
 form, which we may consider as equivalent to its being re- 
 stored to its supposed original nebulous state. He may 
 calculate with equal certainty, what would be the effect of a 
 considerable diminution of the earth's temperature what 
 changes would take place in each of its component sub- 
 stances, and how much the whole would shrink in bulk. 
 
 The earth and all its various substances have at present a 
 certain volume in consequence of the temperature which 
 actually exists. If, then, we admit that its matter and that 
 of the associate planets was at one time diffused throughout 
 the whole space now circumscribed by the orbit of Uranus, it 
 follows, after what we know of the power of heat, that the 
 nebulous form of matter was attended by the condition of a 
 very high temperature. The nebulous matter of space, pre- 
 viously to the formation of stellar and planetary bodies, must 
 have been a universal Fire Mist, an idea which we can 
 scarcely comprehend. The formation of systems out of this 
 
18 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH 
 
 matter implies a change of some kind with regard to the con- 
 dition of the heat. Had this power continued to act with its 
 full original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration 
 by attraction could not have gone on. We do not know 
 enough of the laws of heat to enable us to surmise how the 
 necessary change in this respect was brought about ; but we 
 can trace some of the steps and consequences of the process. 
 Uranus would be formed at the time when the heat of our 
 system's matter was at the greatest, Saturn at the next, and so 
 on. Now this tallies with the exceeding diifuseness of the 
 matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or 
 heavy than the substance cork. It may be that a sufficiency 
 of heat still remains in those planets to make up for their 
 distance from the sun, and the consequent smallness of the 
 heat which they derive from his rays. And it may equally 
 be, since Mercury is nearly thrice the density of the earth, 
 that its matter exists under a degree of cold for which that 
 planet's large enjoyment of the sun's rays is no more than a 
 compensation. Thus there may be upon the whole a nearly 
 equal experience of heat amongst all these children of the 
 sun. Where, meanwhile, is the heat once diffused through 
 the system, over and above what remains in the planets ? 
 May we not rationally presume it to have gone to constitute 
 that luminous envelope of the sun, in which his warmth- 
 giving power is now held to reside ? It may have simply 
 been reserved to constitute, at the last, a means of sustaining 
 the many operations of which the planets were destined to be 
 the theatre. 
 
 The tendency of the preceding considerations is to impress 
 the notion that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly- 
 placed bodies of space, as respects its constituent matter and 
 the physical and chemical laws governing it, with only this 
 qualification, that there are possibly shades of variation with 
 respect to the component materials, and undoubtedly with 
 respect to the conditions under which the laws operate, and 
 consequently the effects which they produce. Thus, there 
 may be substances here which are not in some of the other 
 bodies, and substances here solid may be elsewhere liquid or 
 
AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 19 
 
 vaporiform. We are the more entitled to draw such conclu- 
 sions, seeing that there is nothing at all singular or special in 
 the astronomical situation of the earth. It takes its place 
 third in a series of planets, which series is only one of num- 
 berless other systems forming one group. It is strikingly 
 if such an expression may be used a member of a democracy. 
 Hence, we cannot suppose that there is any peculiarity about 
 it which does not attach to multitudes of other bodies ; in 
 fact, to all that are analogous to it in respect of cosmical ar- 
 rangements. 
 
 It therefore becomes a point of great interest what are the 
 materials of this specimen ? What is the constitutional cha- 
 racter of this object, which may be said to be a sample, 
 presented to our immediate observation, of those crowds of 
 worlds which seem to us as the particles of the desert sand- 
 cloud in number, and to whose diffusion there are no con- 
 ceivable local limits ? 
 
 The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, 
 as has been stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto 
 called elementary. Of these, forty are well- characterized 
 metals, twelve non -metallic bodies, and the remaining three 
 solid substances of intermediate character, which form a con- 
 necting link between the two great groups. Among the non- 
 metallic elements, four viz., oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
 and chlorine, are permanently gaseous ; bromine is fluid at 
 common temperatures ; and the remainder (with the ex- 
 ception of fluorine, which has never been isolated, and whose 
 physical characters are consequently unknown) are solid. 
 
 The body oxygen is considered as by far the most abun- 
 dant substance in our globe. It constitutes a fifth part of 
 our atmosphere, eight-ninths of the weight of water, and a 
 large proportion of every kind of rock in the crust of the 
 earth. Hydrogen, which forms the remaining ^part of water, 
 and enters into some mineral substance, is perhaps next. 
 Nitrogen, of which the atmosphere is four-fifths composed, 
 must be considered as an abundant substance. The metal 
 silicium, which unites with oxygen in nearly equal parts to 
 form silica, the basis of about a half of the rocks in the 
 c2 
 
20 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH 
 
 earth's crust, is, of course, an important ingredient. Alumi- 
 nium, the metallic basis of alumina, a material which enters 
 largely into many rocks, is another abundant elementary sub- 
 stance. So, also, is carbon, a small ingredient in the atmo- 
 sphere, but the chief constituent of animal and vegetable 
 substances, and of all fossils which ever were in the latter 
 condition, amongst which coal takes a conspicuous place. 
 The familiarly -known metals, as iron, tin, lead, silver, gold, 
 are elements of comparatively small magnitude in that ex- 
 terior part of the earth's body which we are able to inves- 
 tigate. 
 
 It is remarkable of the elementary substances that they 
 generally exist in combination. Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, 
 though in mixture they form the aerial envelope of the globe, 
 are never found separate in nature. Carbon is pure only in 
 the diamond. And the metallic bases of the earths, though 
 the chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed 
 unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with 
 moisture makes them burn. Combination and re- combination 
 are principles largely pervading nature. There are few rocks, 
 for example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of 
 matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary 
 substances. What is still more wonderful with respect to 
 this principle of combination, all the elementary substances 
 observe certain mathematical proportions in their unions. 
 When in the gaseous state, one volume of them unites with 
 one, two, three, or more volumes of another, any extra 
 quantity being sure to be left over, if such there should be. 
 Combinations by weight are also governed by fixed and un- 
 changing laws, of the greatest beauty and simplicity. It has 
 hence been surmised that matter is composed of infinitely 
 minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging to any 
 one substance can only associate with a certain number of the 
 atoms of any other. There are also strange predilections 
 amongst substances for each other's company. One will re- 
 main combined in solution with another, till a third is added, 
 when it will abandon the former and attach itself to the 
 
AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 21 
 
 latter. A fourth being added, the third will perhaps leave 
 the first, and join the new comer. 
 
 Such is an outline of the information which chemistry 
 gives us regarding the constituent materials of our globe, 
 and their combinations. How infinitely is the knowledge in- 
 creased in interest, when we consider the probability of such 
 being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and 
 the laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only 
 to local and accidental variations ! 
 
 In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, 
 our attention is called in a special degree to the moon. 
 
 In Laplace's hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses 
 thrown off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had 
 previously been from the sun. The orbit of any satellite is 
 also to be regarded as marking the bounds of the mass of the 
 primary at the time when that satellite was thrown off; its 
 speed likewise denotes the rapidity of the rotatory motion of 
 the primary at that particular juncture. For example, the 
 outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter revolves round his 
 body at the distance of 1,180,582 miles ; hence, according to 
 the hypothesis, the planet was once about 3,675,501 miles in 
 circumference, instead of being, as now, only 89,170 miles in 
 diameter. This large mass would take rather more than six- 
 teen days six hours and a half (the present revolutionary 
 period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on its axis. The 
 innermost satellite would be formed when the planet was re- 
 duced to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated in 
 about forty- two hours and a half. 
 
 From similar inferences, it would result that the mass of 
 the earth, at a certain point of time after it was thrown off 
 from the sun, was no less than 482,000 miles in diameter, 
 being sixty times what it has since shrunk to. At that time, 
 the mass must have taken rather more than twenty-nine and 
 a half days to rotate, (being the revolutionary period of the 
 inoon,) instead of, as now, rather less than twenty-four hours. 
 
 The time intervening between the formation of the moon, 
 and the earth's diminution to its present size, was probably 
 
22 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH 
 
 like one of those vast sums in which astronomy deals so 
 largely, but which the mind altogether fails to grasp. 
 
 The observation made upon the surface of the moon by 
 telescopes tends strongly to support the hypothesis as to all 
 the bodies of space being composed of similar matters subject 
 to certain variations. It does not appear that our satellite is 
 provided with an atmosphere of the kind found upon earth ; 
 neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface. 
 Yet that surface is, like the face of our globe, marked by 
 inequalities and the appearance of volcanic operations. 
 These inequalities and volcanic operations are upon a scale 
 far greater than any which now exist upon the earth's sur- 
 face. The mountains are, in many instances, equal in height 
 to nearly the highest of our Andes. They are generally of 
 extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, peculiarities which 
 might be looked for in a planet deficient in meteoric agen- 
 cies such as those which operate so powerfully in wearing 
 down ruggedness on the surface of our earth. The vol- 
 canic operations are on a stupendous scale. They are the 
 cause of the bright spots of the moon, while the want of 
 them is what distinguishes the duller portions, usually but 
 erroneously called seas. In some parts, bright volcanic matter, 
 besides covering one large patch, radiates out in long streams, 
 which appear studded with subordinate foci of the same kind 
 of energy. A large portion of the surface is covered with 
 circular eminences, called Ring Mountains, of various dia- 
 meters, from a quarter of a mile to several hundred miles, and 
 in some places as close together as the circles on the surface 
 of a boiling pot, which they in no small degree resemble. 
 Some even intrude upon and obliterate portions of the neigh- 
 bouring circles, thus leading to the idea of date, or a succes- 
 sion of events on the moon's surface. Generally, in the 
 centre, there is a mount, which appears to be connected, in 
 the way of cause, with the annular eminence, beyond which 
 again vast boulder-like masses are in some instances seen 
 scattered. What, however, most strikes the senses of an ob- 
 server, is the vast profundity of some of the pits between the 
 
AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 23 
 
 ring and the inner mount ; in one case, this is reckoned to be 
 not less than 22,000 feet, or twice the height of .ZEtna. 
 
 These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can 
 be at present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem 
 to declare that it never can become so. But it is far from un- 
 likely that the elements which seem wanting may be only in 
 combinations different from those which exist here, and may 
 yet be developed as we here find them. Seas may yet fill the 
 profound hollows of the surface ; an atmosphere may spread 
 over the whole. Should these events take place, meteorolo- 
 gical phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will 
 commence, and the moon, like the earth, will become a green 
 and inhabited world. ( 8 ) 
 
 It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any 
 hypothesis, when all the relative phenomena are in harmony 
 with it. This is eminently the case with the Laplacian cos- 
 mogony, for here the associated facts cannot be explained on 
 any other supposition. AVe have seen reason to believe that 
 the primary condition of matter was that of a diffused mass, 
 in which the component molecules were kept apart through 
 the efficacy of heat ; that portions of this matter agglome- 
 rated into suns, which threw off planets ; that these planets 
 were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted 
 by cooling to their present dimensions. Now, as to our 
 own globe, there is a remarkably distinct memorial of the 
 supposed high temperature of the materials, in the store of 
 heat which still exists in the interior. The immediate sur- 
 face of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the temperature 
 which might be expected to be imparted to such materials by 
 the heat of the sun. There is a point a very short way down, 
 but varying in different climes, where all effect from the sun's 
 rays ceases. Then commences a temperature from an entirely 
 different cause, one which evidently has its source in the 
 interior of the earth, and which regularly increases as we 
 descend to greater and greater depths, the rate of increment 
 being, in general, about one degree Fahrenheit for every fifty 
 feet ; and of this high temperature there are other evidences 
 
24 CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermal springs, as well as 
 in what is ascertained with regard to the density of the 
 entire mass of the earth. This approximates five and a half 
 times the weight of water; hut the actual weight of the prin- 
 cipal solid substances composing the outer crust is as two 
 and a half times the weight of water ; and this, we know, if 
 the globe were solid and cold, should increase greatly towards 
 the centre, water acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 
 miles below the surface, and other things in proportion, and 
 these densities becoming much greater at greater depths ; 
 so that the entire mass of a cool globe should be of a gravity 
 infinitely exceeding five and a half times the weight of water. 
 The only alternative supposition is, that the central materials 
 are greatly expanded or diffused by some means ; and by 
 what means could they be so expanded but by heat ? Indeed, 
 the existence of this central heat, a residuum of that which kept 
 all matter in a vaporiform chaos at first, is amongst the most 
 solid discoveries of modern science,( 9 ) and the support which 
 it gives to the nebular hypothesis is highly important. We 
 shall heratefter see what have been supposed by some to be 
 traces of an operation of this heat upon the surface of the 
 earth in very remote times ; an effect, however, which has 
 long passed entirely away. 
 
25 
 
 THE EARTH FORMED GEOLOGICAL 
 CHANGES. 
 
 IN our version of the romance of nature, we now descend 
 from the consideration of orb- filled space and the character of 
 the universal elements, to trace the- history of our own globe. 
 We shall see that it falls into connexion in an interesting 
 manner with the primary order of things indicated by La- 
 place's Hypothesis. 
 
 The nature of the materials of the externe or crust of our 
 globe, is known to a greater depth than might be supposed, 
 in consequence of the relation of position of its various 
 masses. C'onfused as these at first appear, an order of ar- 
 rangement, connected with time, has been detected in them 
 by the labours of modern geologists. It is found that a cer- 
 tain kind of rock, below which there is never, in ordinary 
 circumstances, any other kind, is of crystaline character. 
 Sometimes elevated in naked mountain masses, sometimes 
 found only at great depths below other rocks of a different 
 kind, Granite (for such is its name) appears as the basis 
 rock of the earth's crust ; the form into which the once 
 fluid matter of our planet was primarily resolved, although, 
 in many instances, subjected, under heat, to new move- 
 ments at times' long subsequent. The crystals of granite 
 are of distinct substances quartz, felspar, mica, and horn- 
 blende (each of which is, again, a combination of a cer- 
 tain number of the simple or elementary substances) : two 
 
26 THE EARTH FORMED : 
 
 of these, sometimes three, associated in various proportions, 
 compose the rock, which thus appears in many varieties, 
 passing under different names. 
 
 Where granite does not appear upon the surface, or else 
 some other igneous rock, such as will presently be adverted 
 to, we find that great flooring overlaid with rocks of a diffe- 
 rent character and history namely, what are called Aqueous 
 or Sedimentary Rocks. These are in the form of strata or 
 beds, and have evidently been for the most part produced as 
 a sediment of sand, clay, or other materials, at the bottom of 
 seas, the matter being hardened by heat and pressure after its 
 deposition. Whence the materials of these rocks ? With 
 some peculiar exceptions, each group of them has been derived 
 from the substance of such rocks as were previously in exist- 
 ence, the earliest from the original granite, and so on in suc- 
 cession ; and this, by means or processes which continue in 
 operation at the present day. That is to say, the atmosphere, 
 by the chemical action of its materials, and the vapours with 
 which it is charged, wears down whatever rocks are exposed 
 to it ; rivers carry the particles into the sea, the sea also 
 erodes the rocks against which it impinges, and strews the 
 matter along its bottom; thus are sediments laid down, to be 
 in time formed into rocks. Many of the earliest or lowest 
 strata are obviously composed of material but slightly changed 
 from the original granite ; such are all the rocks bearing the 
 name of Gneiss. Others present the component materials in 
 different combinations ; as, for instance, where, with clay de- 
 rived from the felspar and the addition of mica, Micaceous 
 Schist has been formed. Sometimes the quartz forms a se- 
 dimentary rock by itself. For such elections of materials, 
 as they may be called, we see natural means of accounting, 
 when we reflect that the lighter particles of any substance 
 suspended in moving water are liable to be carried most ra- 
 pidly, and to the greatest distance. ( 10 ) It is also to be re- 
 marked of all these early rocks, that they have evidently 
 been subjected to an extraordinary degree of heat, insomuch 
 that they generally have acquired a new crystaline texture, 
 are strangely waved and contorted, and often cannot be 
 
GEOLOGICAL CHANGES. 27 
 
 distinguished from the underlying granite, the adjacent 
 parts of which may sometimes be detected as having been 
 placed there after the deposition of the aqueous rocks. Now 
 the lowest stratified rocks are sometimes found lying in 
 a nearly horizontal position, as they would be originally 
 formed ; but more generally they are tilted up in high in- 
 clinations, with the broken edges directed towards granitic 
 mountains ; indicating that the rise of these mountains from 
 below was the cause of the change of position in the stratified 
 rocks. Thus the earliest strata were in their turn exposed to 
 the wearing influences of sea and atmosphere, and the mate- 
 rials appropriated to form new rocks. And, precisely as 
 might be expected, these new rocks are laid down uncon- 
 formably to the old ; that is, their verges rest at an angle 
 against the sides of the senior formation. These new rocks 
 are again, in their turn, broken up and placed in high inclina- 
 tions by new and similar upbursts of igneous rock ; so as 
 to become liable, of course, to similar disintegration. Such 
 a repetition of wearings down and raisings up, implying fre- 
 quent changes of land and sea, has been in reality the history 
 of our globe since it took its present shape. A granitic crust, 
 containing vast and profound oceans, as is proved by the ex- 
 tent and thickness of the earliest strata, was the infant condi- 
 tion of the earth. Points of unconformableness in the over- 
 lying aqueous rocks, connected with protrusions of granites, 
 and other similar presentments of the internal igneous mass, 
 such as trap and basalt, mark the conclusions of subsequent 
 sections in this grand tale. Dates, such as chronologists 
 never dreamed of compared with which those of Egypt's 
 dynasties are as the latter to a child's reckoning of its birth- 
 days have thus been presented to the now living generation, 
 in connexion with the history of our planet. 
 
 The aqueous rocks, taken in their details, are a vast num- 
 ber. Geologists, however, group them in formations or sys- 
 tems, partly with reference to their lithological characters and 
 the breaks in stratific arrangement above described, and partly 
 with regard to an entirely different class of particulars. It is 
 now time to say that, from an early portion of the sedimen- 
 
28 THE EARTH FORMED, ETC. 
 
 tary rock series to its close, the mineral masses are found to 
 enclose remains of the organic beings (plants and animals) 
 which flourished upon earth during the time when the various 
 strata were forming ; and these organisms, or such parts of 
 them as were of sufficient solidity, have, in many instances, 
 been preserved with the utmost fidelity, although for the most 
 part converted into the substance of the enclosing mineral. 
 Now, as we pass along through the series of strata, we find a 
 cessation of certain specific forms of plants and animals, while 
 others come into view ; at some points, the change is almost 
 complete at others, it is very considerable. Such demarca- 
 tions are taken into account by geologists in the grouping of 
 the rock series. They speak of a Palceozoic Period, compre- 
 hending a large early section, terminating at a point where 
 the specific forms are for the first time almost wholly changed ; 
 a Secondary Period, and a Tertiary Period, these also giving 
 groups of species all but distinct. Under each period are 
 reckoned certain systems, more or less organically distinct, 
 and these we shall now proceed to treat separately. 
 
29 
 
 LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN FORMA- 
 TIONSFIRST FORMS OF LIFE. 
 
 THE first leaves of the Stone Book have been damaged by 
 fire. It is acknowledged by all geologists that the rocks of 
 what has been called the Gneiss and Mica Slate System, were, 
 subsequently to their deposition, exposed to so high a tempera- 
 ture, that, though organic remains had been entombed in them, 
 we should have had no chance of seeing these preserved. ( n ) 
 If it be a fact, therefore, that no distinct traces of plants and 
 animals are presented in these rocks, it is no conclusive proof 
 that such did not then exist. But no such fact can be said to 
 have been ascertained. Certain fragments resembling the 
 cases of infusoria (shelled animalcules) have been observed.( 12 ) 
 A few patches of limestone (primary limestone) indicate 
 organic life as having been present where they were formed ;( 13 ) 
 and a similar inference has been drawn from certain experi- 
 ments of M. Braconnot, in which he detected ammoniacal 
 products from masses of this formation. From analogy, 
 moreover, seeing that all other sedimentary formations con- 
 tain remains of living beings it appears, a priori, unlikely 
 that this should be, any otherwise than apparently, devoid of 
 them. ( 14 ) However all this may be, it is certain that the 
 next formation the Silurian is the first in which we find 
 incontestable monuments of the early life of our planet. 
 
 The Silurian System is so named, because a district in 
 western England, where it is largely presented at the surface, 
 and where it was first thoroughly examined, was that occu- 
 
30 LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN FORMATIONS: 
 
 pied in the time of the Romans by a people called the Silures. 
 It is in reality developed much more extensively in Scandi- 
 navia and Russia, as well as other parts of the world. With 
 us it- is a series of clayey and arenaceous beds, of hard con- 
 sistence ; but the characters are different in other countries. 
 
 And what were the vessels of the mystery of life upon our 
 earth in the era of the Silurian formation, as far as these 
 rocks can inform us ? 
 
 One would imagine that, if our present amount of geolo- 
 gical knowledge had come to us by some sudden revelation, 
 it would have been with a kind of awe that its first recipients 
 would have waited for this portion of it. But had they done 
 so, they would quickly have had to admit that nature is 
 simpler than man's wit would make her, for, behold, the in- 
 terrogation only brings before us the unpretending forms of 
 a few humble sea-plants, certain zoophytes and polypiaria, 
 and a variety of shelled marine animals ! 
 
 To descend to particulars Fucoids, or markings produced 
 by fuci, a tribe of sea-plants, appear in the Lower Silurians 
 of Russia, below any ascertained animal remains, thus sup- 
 porting the obvious conclusion that vegetation must have 
 started fully as early as animal life, since the one thing is 
 necessary to the support of the other. In America, the same 
 vegetable remains are presented in the very first ascertained 
 fossiliferous strata ; but in England they are not as yet found 
 quite so early. In the Lower Silurians of Sweden, not only 
 are there distinct impressions of such plants, but Professor 
 Forchhammer speaks of courses of true coal, composed, as he 
 thinks, of sea-weed, and gives an opinion that the alum-slate 
 of that country owes its combustible character to the carbon, 
 sulphur, and potash, derived from marine vegetation. ( 15 ) 
 
 Of the animals, the first we are called upon to notice are 
 Polypiaria, the creatures to which we are indebted for those 
 vast coral reefs by which the course of the mariner is so often 
 obstructed in tropical seas, beings thus productive of great 
 results, and yet in themselves extremely humble, as is partly 
 indicated by the composite form in which they exist. Next 
 to them may be ranked certain humble animals (graptolites) 
 
FIRST FORMS OF LIFE. 31 
 
 allied to the sea-pens of modern seas, a family usually inha- 
 biting mud and slimy sediment in deep water. We come to 
 creatures comparatively well organized, and yet still within 
 the lowest division of the Animal Kingdom, when we speak 
 of Crinoidea, which might be described as a lowly kind of 
 star-fish, fixed on the top of a flexible stalk arising from the 
 sea-bottom. Numberless calcareous plates enter into the 
 composition of the stalk, body, and multitudinous tentacula or 
 arms of the crinoid, forming altogether a wonderful example 
 of the elaborateness of pattern on which nature sometimes 
 works ; and yet it is a very humble animal, only, indeed, a 
 stomach of one aperture, with arms wherewith to supply 
 itself with food. The echinodermata, however, to which 
 order it belongs, are the destructives of their grade ; and 
 thus soon, it therefore appears, were animals set up as a police 
 over the rest, to effect the great providential object of con- 
 trolling the numbers of living beings. 
 
 We have spoken of the Animal Kingdom and one of its divi- 
 sions. It may be well here to state that these divisions have 
 a reference to the grade and general character of the animals. 
 An animal is said to be low, when its organization is of a 
 simple kind, subservient to a comparatively narrow range of 
 functions, and suited to a comparatively narrow field of exist- 
 ence, if, like the polypes, for instance, and crinoids, it be 
 fixed in situation, and consist mainly of an alimentary recep- 
 tacle, with means of filling that with food. Elevation is 
 marked in the scale, by an animal ceasing to be compound 
 (which is the case of the coralline polypes), assuming a 
 power of locomotion, having sex assigned to separate indivi- 
 duals, exchanging a multiplicity of parts serving one end (as 
 the many pairs of feet in the centipede) for a smaller number ; 
 attaining, in short, at once a more complex and more concen- 
 trated organization. On such grounds, the animal kingdom 
 may be primarily divided into Vertelrated and Invertelrated ; 
 animals with a back-bone and the superior nervous system 
 which that structure implies, and animals devoid of that 
 structure and possessing a humbler nervous system. In the 
 latter are placed, first, the rayed animals {Radiata) ; then, on 
 
32 LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN FORMATIONS: 
 
 one higher platform, the Articulata or jointed animals, as 
 Crustacea, insects, spiders, and the Mollusca, or pulpy 
 animals, of which oysters, cowries, and cuttle-fish are ex- 
 amples. To all these, the Vertebrata are as a great and beau- 
 tiful superstructure upon a rustic basement, in the four great 
 classes of ascending rank Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, Mammalia. 
 
 To resume our view of the Lower Silurian fossils : Of 
 Articulata, we have first a few examples of its lowest class, 
 the Annelides or sea worms, a group ill adapted for pre- 
 servation ; otherwise, they might have been seen in greater 
 abundance. Some which were found in a building stone at 
 Lampeter, far down in the Lower Silurians, lie in a long 
 coil, as they might be supposed to have laid themselves down 
 to die upon the sea-bottom ; they are considered as allied to 
 the nereis of the present seas. But by far the most conspi- 
 cuous articulate of the early rocks is a member of the class 
 Crustacea. 
 
 This is the Trilobite, a marine animal to which the wood- 
 louse makes the nearest approach in general form, but marked 
 by two groovings along the length of the body, so as to pre- 
 sent a tri-lobed form ; hence the name. The animal of our 
 present seas most resembling it, is the limulus, or king- 
 crab. It is surprising how many species and even genera of 
 the trilobite lived in the Silurian seas, and in what quantities 
 their remains are found in various parts of the earth. The 
 means of locomotion possessed by the animal are not known ; 
 but from its form we must suppose it to have lived at the 
 bottom of the sea, having its eyes directed upwards and side- 
 ways. The latter organs presenting facets such as are seen 
 upon similar animals of our era, we may be said to have a 
 proof furnished to us by this humble creature, " that the 
 water of those oceans and the supernatant atmosphere, was 
 as transparent a medium at that time as it is at the present 
 day, and that therefore no material permanent alteration can 
 have resulted in either during the thousands of years which 
 have elapsed since the creation of the animal world on this 
 earth." ( 1 ). The trilobites stand low in the Crustacea, nor 
 
FIRST FORMS OF LIFE. 33 
 
 were any higher animals of that order (such as crabs, lobsters, 
 &c.,) yet in existence. 
 
 Of the division Mollusca, the predominant form in point of 
 numbers was the bivalve order Brackiopoda, which is now 
 but slenderly represented upon earth. So numerous are the 
 specimens in the Silurian rocks, that an eminent geologist 
 calls this emphatically the Age of Brachiopods. ( n ) The ani- 
 mal is a humble one, having two shells, not connected by a 
 hinge, as is usual in superior bivalves, but kept together by a 
 bundle of fibres. Its destiny is to remain fixed at the bottom 
 of deep seas, and live upon nutritive particles, which it col- 
 lects by means of two spiral-shaped arms, extending from 
 the margin of its mouth, and from which the order has received 
 its name. The superior abundance of life in the depths of the 
 ocean, far from land, may be inferred, as a fact of this period, 
 from the comparative number of the brachiopod fossils. 
 
 Of univalves, which, generally speaking, rank above the 
 bivalves, there are remains of all the three classes. The first 
 and humblest, Pteropoda, most of which are naked, and 
 therefore incapable of preservation in the fossil state, appear 
 only in a few slight conical shells, indicating an animal allied 
 to the genus Criseis, still common in the Mediterranean. Of 
 the next, Gasteropoda, there are many fossil species. There 
 are also representatives of the last class, Cephalopoda, amongst 
 which are now found some of the highest of the invertebrate 
 animals, as the nautilus, cuttle-fish, and poulp. The cepha- 
 lopods (orthoceratites, &c.,) pursuing a free-swimming life, 
 and highly organized for the catching and destroying of the 
 weaker marine animals, were the lords of the organic world 
 in their day. 
 
 Such are the organisms of the Lower Silurian era, the first 
 age of organization upon earth of which any very distinct 
 memories have been left to us. There was as yet no fish nor 
 any other kind of vertebrated animal, nor any creature which 
 lived upon dry land. The zoology of the Upper Silurians is 
 only different in as far as it presents, for the most part, new 
 species of the same families, and a greater abundance of speci- 
 mens ; one rock (Wenlock limestone) is a mere mass of the 
 
 D 
 
34 LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN FORMATIONS. 
 
 remains of corals, crinoids, and trilobites, held together by- 
 shale, and gives us, in England,* a few obscure traces of fish. 
 It is most remarkable how uniform has been the Fauna of 
 the earth in those primitive ages. Silurian rocks have now 
 been examined in England, Russia, Germany, and North 
 America, with great care ; also in South America, the south- 
 ern part of Africa, and even at the Falkland islands, the very 
 antipodes of Britain ; yet in no place has any essential differ- 
 ence of fossils been detected. Brachiopods, orthoceratites, 
 trilobites, are almost everywhere characteristic fossils. In 
 the Alleghany mountains, in the hills of Herefordshire, on 
 the slopes of the Ural chain, which divides Europe from Asia, 
 we have remains of the same animal tribes. ( 18 ) There are 
 differences of species that is to say, the fossils of different 
 regions present certain minor peculiarities but even this is 
 only partial, and does not materially interfere with the general 
 fact that there has been a remarkable uniformity of life in 
 the primeval seas. In the present era, it is hardly necessary 
 to say, the case is very different. Even seas so near as the Red 
 Sea and Mediterranean, present wholly different genera of 
 mollusks. It has been thought that there might be a cause 
 for the greater uniformity of life in those ages, in the greater 
 uniformity of temperature, resulting from the as yet unspent 
 heat of the surface, arising from the internal incandescence ; 
 but perhaps the more probable cause was simply the compa- 
 rative newness of life upon earth, and its little experience of 
 those external agencies by which it is liable to be affected, 
 and which, we shall see reason to believe, have operated in 
 producing the many shades of variation which now mark the 
 organic kingdoms. 
 
35 
 
 DEVONIAN ERA. FISHES ABUNDANT. 
 
 WE now advance to a new chapter in this marvellous history 
 that of the Devonian era. The term Devonian System is 
 applied to an important and conspicuous group of strata, 
 overlying the Silurian, and largely developed first in the 
 South of Devonshire (whence the name), and in Cornwall, 
 South Wales, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire ; 
 also in Scotland, the valley of the Rhine, Russia, and the west- 
 ern states of America ; besides, in all probability, many parts of 
 the world as yet unexplored. In Scotland, the great Gram- 
 pian elevation, composed of granite and gneissic rock, is 
 skirted by a dense formation of conglomerate and red sand- 
 stone, extending in a sweep from Dunbarton to Stonehaven, 
 and so on to Morayshire, Ross, and Caithness. This passes 
 by the general name of the Old Red Sandstone, which was at 
 first used as an appellative for the system ; but it has latterly 
 been abandoned, as redness is not found to be a prevailing 
 peculiarity of the strata in other countries. In Russia, a 
 surface as large as the whole of Great Britain is occupied by 
 this formation. It reaches a thickness of ten thousand feet 
 in England. 
 
 The general forms of life prevalent in the Silurian era are 
 continued in the Devonian, with the remarkable addition of a 
 large development of the humblest vertebrate class Fishes. 
 There is here, as there was in the Silurians, an abundance of 
 zoophytes, corallines, crinoids, crustaceans, and mollusks, 
 but mostly presenting those inferior variations which natural- 
 ists regard as constituting distinct species : speaking strictly, 
 D2 
 
36 DEVONIAN ERA. 
 
 out of about eight hundred so-called species of the Silurian 
 epoch, one hundred pass into the Devonian formation, where, 
 however, they gradually disappear, while new ones as gradu- 
 ally take their place. For such changes of species, adopting 
 this word in the sense usually attached to it, geologists suggest 
 causes in physical changes, as the rise of a sea-bottom by 
 gradual filling up, or the intrusion of a new mineral material 
 into the ocean, or one of a more decisive kind proceeding 
 from such revolutions as are indicated by unconformableness 
 in the strata. But on this point much obscurity at present 
 rests, for, as our survey is extended into other countries, it is 
 found that extensive changes of species occur without any 
 apparent dependence on at least some of these causes ; so that, 
 in these instances, some other explanation remains to be 
 sought for. 
 
 Corallines (favosites, cyathophylla, stromatopora) are 
 amongst those genera which pass from the Silurians to the 
 Devonians ; they are so abundant, as in some places to con- 
 stitute entire strata, (Devonshire marbles.) The crinoids and 
 trilobites are also continued as families throughout this era. Of 
 the latter we have a new species (brontes), marked by several 
 new features, including a set of claws resembling those of the 
 common lobster, and the whole length of which is judged to 
 have been not less than four feet. Some of the new brachio- 
 pods are of very peculiar shape ; amongst the gasteropods are 
 some which approach existing forms. The lordly cephalo- 
 poda continue to be largely represented, but in a considerable 
 change of form ; for while the chief animals of this class in the 
 Silurians (orthoceratites) had a simple, straight, or slightly 
 curved shell, those new to the present era (as clymenia) had 
 one forming a complete spiral. 
 
 The most remarkable circumstance connected with the 
 Devonian formation, is its presenting us with fish. A few 
 faint traces of this class had, as we have seen, been presented 
 in the Upper Silurians of our own country, though, it may be 
 remarked, wanting in the corresponding rocks of Russia. 
 We are now to see such memorials of them in the Devonian 
 formation as show that the seas of that era had in many 
 
FISHES ABUNDANT. 37 
 
 places swarmed with such inhabitants. M. Agassiz, of Xeuf- 
 chatel, to whom the investigation of the subject has chiefly 
 been committed, has ascertained upwards of a hundred species 
 of Devonian fish, to which number it is to be expected that 
 many additions will yet be made. 
 
 The predominating fishes of this system, and the only ones 
 which (as far as fossils show) existed for some ages, are 
 arranged by M. Agassiz in two orders, with a regard to their 
 external covering, which that naturalist holds to be, in fishes, 
 a reflection of the internal organization. Both orders, it is 
 to be remarked at the very first, are manifestly of an inferior 
 character to the two other orders which afterwards came into 
 existence, and still are the principal fishes of our seas, these 
 being covered by true scales, and respectively named ctenoid 
 and cycloid, from the forms of that part of their organization. 
 The two orders of early fish are covered with integuments 
 considerably different in character ; the one (placoids) with 
 irregular enamelled plates, the other (ganoids} with regular 
 enamelled scales, the first being not placed over each other, 
 as scales are, but laid edge to edge, in the manner of a pave- 
 ment. These characters, according to M. Agassiz, were 
 accompanied by a rudimentary or cartilaginous skeleton, 
 while the ctenoids and cycloids possess an osseous struc- 
 ture. 
 
 The cephalaspis has a longish tail-like body inserted 
 within the cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, some- 
 what like a saddler's cutting-knife. The body is covered 
 with strong plates of bone, enamelled, and the head was 
 protected on the upper side with one large plate, as with a 
 buckler hence the name, implying buckler-head. A range 
 of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as weak in 
 motion as it is strong in structure. In the coccosteus, the 
 outline of the body is of the form of a short thick coffin, 
 rounded, covered with strong bony plates, and terminating 
 in a long tail, which seems to have been the sole organ of 
 motion. While the tail establishes this creature among the 
 vertebrata and the fishes, its teeth, chiselled, as it were, out 
 of the solid bone of the jaw, like the nippers of a lobster, 
 
38 DEVONIAN ERA. 
 
 suggest its propinquity to the invertebrate part of creation . 
 The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body, 
 arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long 
 tail; but its most remarkable feature, and that which has 
 suggested its name, is a pair of narrow wing-like appen- 
 dages attached to the shoulders, which the creature is 
 supposed to have erected for its defence when attacked by an 
 enemy. 
 
 A group of ganoids seem to have been the police of their 
 day, possessing a powerful development of sharp conical 
 teeth situated on the margin of the jaws. One genus, the 
 holoptychius, introduced near the close of the Old Red era, 
 and passing up into the next, presents a flat oval form, mea- 
 suring in one specimen thirty inches by twelve, with a cover- 
 ing of strong plates, wavily grooved and overlapping each 
 other, the head forming only a slight rounded projection from 
 the general figure. We here find another early and startling 
 example, in addition to the brontes, of animals which may be 
 called large. In the strata of this formation at Db'rpat, there 
 are gigantic bones, which were at first thought to belong to 
 reptiles, but have since been ascertained to be remains of 
 fishes, leading to the conjecture that the animals to which 
 they appertained could not be less than thirty- six feet 
 long (i9). 
 
 M. Agassiz has lately announced nine genera of sharks of 
 the division Cestraceon in the Devonians of Russia. It is in 
 this voracious family that we see the placoids represented in 
 modern seas ; the ganoids are all but unrepresented in our 
 time. Of both classes, one invariable peculiarity has at- 
 tracted much attention. " In all recent fish, with the excep- 
 tion of the shark family, the sturgeon, and the bony pike, the 
 vertebral column terminates at the point where the caudal fin 
 is given off, and this fin is expanded above and below the 
 body, forming what is called a homocercal tail. In all those, 
 without exception, which have been found in strata of the 
 Palaeozoic period, [placoids and ganoids,] the caudal fin is he- 
 terocercal) being formed of two unequal branches, the upper 
 
FISHES ABUNDANT. 39 
 
 one expanded immediately from the vertebral column, while 
 the lower one is given off at a point some distance from the 
 extremity." ( 20 ) Xow it is a remarkable fact, that this one- 
 sided tail is a peculiarity in the more perfect fishes (as the 
 salmon) at a certain stage in their embryonic history ; as is 
 also the inferior position of the mouth, peculiar to the early 
 fishes. More than this : in the earlier periods of embryonic 
 life, there is no vertebral column. This organ is represented 
 in embryos by a gelatinous cord, called the dorsal cord, 
 which in maturity disappears as the vertebrae are formed 
 upon it. M. Agassiz has satisfied himself that this was the 
 nature of the organization of the early fishes, as it is that of 
 the sturgeon of the present seas. It is not premature to re- 
 mark how broadly these facts hint at the parity of law affect- 
 ing the progress of general creation, and the progress of an 
 individual foetus of one of the more perfect animals. ( 21 ) An- 
 other feature of the placoids, bringing them down towards 
 the level of an inferior portion of the animal kingdom, is the 
 distinct marks which the dermal plates bear, in many speci- 
 mens, t)f processes for muscular attachments. This suggests 
 a peculiarity of articulate animals, and powerfully hints that 
 the cartilaginous skeleton had not been, as in higher verte- 
 brata, the grand support of the frame, and the basis of its 
 strength. 
 
 An eminent geologist is of opinion that the species of this 
 era vary locally, as far as might be expected from what we 
 see of the distribution of animal life in the present times. 
 Nevertheless, throughout the distant parts of the earth where 
 Devonian strata are found, the general characters of animals 
 and also vegetable life are nearly the same. It is further ob- 
 served, that whatever particular family is continued with 
 little change through a succession of strata, is also amongst 
 those most widely extended over the world. It is the opinion 
 of M. Brongniart, who has distinguished himself by his in- 
 vestigation of vegetable fossils, that the fuci of these early 
 seas indicate a higher temperature than now prevails at many 
 of the places where they are found. He regards this as a 
 
40 DEVONIAN ERA. 
 
 proof of the more equable diffusion of a tropical climate in 
 ancient times, and distinctly attributes it to the action of the 
 internal heat of the earth. The early animals are not so uni- 
 form over large geographical areas as the plants. M. Agassiz 
 surmises, from an examination of the fishes of the ancient seas, 
 that the ocean did not at first contain much salt, but gradually 
 acquired its present infusion of that material ; a theory, it 
 may be remarked, which derives support from the suggestion, 
 that the salt of the sea has been mainly brought thither, in the 
 course of time, by rivers, washing it in particles out of the 
 land, in common with other detritus, while it is obvious that 
 rain does not restore it.( 22 ) It is easy to suppose a compara- 
 tive absence of salt in the early ocean affecting animal and 
 vegetable marine life in different ways and degrees. 
 
 As yet overlooking possible exceptions of a narrow and 
 dubious kind ( 23 ) we meet with no traces of land plants : 
 remains of terrestrial animals have not even been suspected. 
 This exclusively marine character of the flora and fauna of the 
 early ages is usually thought to betoken the non-existence of 
 dry land. But there are reasons apart from the fossil history 
 for believing that great masses had been exposed to the atmo- 
 sphere in those ages. The earliest strata give token of vast 
 disintegration. In our time, this process is usually seen tak- 
 ing place chiefly in the atmosphere, and at the point where 
 land and water meet ; in a much less activity below the sur- 
 face of the ocean. It would thus appear likely that there was 
 dry land in the eras of the earliest stratified formations, 
 though, from whatever cause, it bore no vegetation and sus- 
 tained no animals, or was only a scene of life in certain rare 
 and favourably situated places. The ages of mountains, from 
 which this inference is derived, form one of the most curious 
 as well, as trustworthy chapters in geological science. It is 
 as certain that the Grampian mountains of Scotland are older 
 than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that civilization had 
 visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world, while 
 Scotland was the residence of " roving barbarians." The 
 Pyrenees, Carpathians, and other ranges of continental 
 
FISHES ABUNDANT. 41 
 
 Europe, are all younger than the Grampians, or even the in- 
 significant Mendip Hills of southern England. Stratification 
 tells this tale as plainly as Livy tells the history of the Roman 
 republic. It tells us to use the words of Professor Phillips 
 that at the time when the Grampians sent streams and detritus 
 to straits where now the valleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, 
 the greater part of Europe was a wide ocean. 
 
42 
 
 CARBONIGENOUS ERA. 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 
 
 THE next group of rocks is called the Carboniferous For- 
 mation, from the remarkable feature of its numerous inter- 
 spersed beds of coal. It commences with the beds of the 
 mountain limestone, which, in some situations, as in Derby- 
 shire and Ireland, are of great thickness, being alternated 
 with chert, (a siliceous sandstone,) sandstones, shales, and 
 beds of coal, generally of the harder and less bituminous kind, 
 (anthracite,} the whole being covered in some places by the 
 millstone grit, a siliceous conglomerate, composed of the de- 
 tritus of the earliest formation. The mountain limestone, 
 attaining in England to a depth of eight hundred yards, 
 greatly exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone beds, 
 and shows an enormous addition of power to the causes con- 
 nected with animal life, by which this substance is supposed 
 to have been produced. In fact, distinct remains of corals, 
 crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant in it, as to compose 
 three-fourths of the mass in some parts. 
 
 Above the mountain limestone commence the more conspi- 
 cuous coal beds, alternating with sandstones, shales, beds of 
 limestone, and ironstone. Coal is altogether composed of the 
 matter of a terrestrial vegetation, transmuted by putrefaction 
 of a peculiar kind, beneath the surface of water and in the 
 absence of air. Some estuary shells have been found in it, 
 but few of pelagic origin, and no remains of those zoophytes 
 and crinoidea so abundant in the mountain limestone and 
 
COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 43 
 
 other rocks. Coal beds exist in Europe, Asia, and America, 
 and have hitherto been esteemed as the most valuable of 
 mineral productions, from the important services which the 
 substance renders in manufactures and in domestic economy. 
 It is to be remarked, that there are some local variations in 
 the arrangement of coal beds. In France, they rest imme- 
 diately on the granite and other primary rocks, the interme- 
 diate strata not having been found at those places. In other 
 countries, traces of coal are found in the Devonian formation. 
 These last circumstances may only show that different parts 
 of the earth's surface did not all witness the same events of a 
 certain fixed series exactly at the same time. 
 
 Some features of the condition of the earth during the de- 
 position of the carboniferous group, are made out with a clear- 
 ness which must satisfy most minds. First we are told of a 
 time when carbonate of lime was formed in vast abundance 
 along the shores and islands of the ocean, accompanied by an 
 unusually large population of corals and encrinites ; while in 
 some parts of the earth there were pieces of dry land covered 
 with a luxuriant vegetation. Xext we have a comparatively 
 brief period of volcanic disturbance, (when the conglomerate 
 was formed.) Then the causes favourable to the so abundant 
 production of limestone, and the large population of marine 
 radiata, decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase 
 in number and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest 
 vegetation, far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical 
 spots of the present surface. The climate, even in the lati- 
 tude of Baffin's Bay, was torrid ; and the atmosphere has been 
 supposed by some to have contained a larger charge of car- 
 bonic acid gas (the material of vegetation) than it now does. 
 The forests or thickets of the period included no plants speci- 
 fically the same with those now known upon earth. They 
 mainly consisted of gigantic vegetables, many of which are 
 not represented by any existing types, while others are akin 
 to kinds which, in temperate climes at least, are now only 
 found in small and lowly forms. That these forests grew 
 upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, is considered 
 
44 CARBONIGENOUS ERA. 
 
 probable, from similar vegetation being now found in such 
 situations within the tropics. 
 
 With regard to the circumstances under which the masses 
 of vegetable matter were transformed into successive coal 
 strata, geologists are divided. From examples seen at the 
 present day, at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi, 
 which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other cir- 
 cumstances to be adverted to, it is held likely by some that 
 the vegetable matter, the rubbish of decayed forests, was 
 carried by rivers into estuaries, and there accumulated in vast 
 natural rafts, until it sunk to the bottom, where an overlay of 
 sand or mud would prepare it for becoming a stratum of coal. 
 Others conceive that the vegetation first passed into the con- 
 dition of a peat moss, that a subsidence then exposed it to be 
 overrun by the sea, and covered with a layer of sand or mud ; 
 that a subsequent uprise made the mud dry land, and fitted 
 it to bear a new forest, w*hich afterwards, like its predecessors, 
 became a bed of peat ; that, in short, by repetitions of this 
 process, the alternate layers of coal, sandstone, and shale, con- 
 stituting the carboniferous group, were formed. It is favour- 
 able to this last view that marine fossils are rarely found in 
 the body of the coal itself, though abundant in the shale layers 
 above and below it ; also that in several places erect stems of 
 trees are found with their roots still fixed in the shale beds, 
 and crossing the sandstone beds at almost right angles, show- 
 ing that these, at least, had not been drifted from their ori- 
 ginal situations. On the other hand, it is not easy to admit 
 such repeated risings and sinkings of surface as would be 
 required, on this hypothesis, to form a series of coal strata. 
 Perhaps we may most safely rest at present with the suppo- 
 sition that coal has been formed under both classes of circum- 
 stances, though in the latter only as an exception to the 
 former. 
 
 The plants of the carbonigenous period have been investi- 
 gated with great care by several able naturalists, and above 
 eight hundred species have been ascertained. The living plants 
 of our own era are at least 80,000, and it is difficult to suppose 
 the flora of that remote age to have been so much more 
 
COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 45 
 
 limited. It must, however, be observed, that there are many 
 conceivable circumstances to account for the non-preserva- 
 tion or transmission of many of the plants of this era. The 
 numerous fungi, and other lowly forms, could scarcely have 
 left clear memorials of themselves in the rocks, or in the 
 masses of coal ; and it has even been ascertained by experi- 
 ment, that some of the highest forms of vegetation perish with 
 surprising quickness in water. If we might assume, never- 
 theless, that the plants actually ascertained, form in any degree 
 a representation of the flora of this period, they would imply 
 that the early terrestrial botany of our globe was greatly less 
 varied than the present, and composed chiefly of plants of 
 comparatively simple form and structure. ( 24 J 
 
 In the ranks of the vegetable kingdom, the lowest place is 
 taken by plants of cellular tissue, and which have no flowers, 
 (cryptogamia,) as sea-weeds, lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns. 
 Above these stand plants with vascular tissue, and bearing 
 flowers, in which again there are two great subdivisions ; 
 first, plants having one seed-lobe, (monocotyledons,) and in 
 which the new matter is added within, (endogenous the cane 
 and palm are examples ;) second, plants having two seed-lobes, 
 (dicotyledons,) and in which the new matter is added on the 
 outside under the bark, (exogenous the pine, elm, oak, and 
 all the British forest-trees are examples ;) these subdivisions 
 also ranking in the order in which they are here stated. Now 
 it is found that the predominant plants of the coal era are of 
 the cellular and cryptogamic kind, while the dicotyledons are 
 comparatively rare. There is, indeed, one exogenous family, 
 which occurs in considerable numbers, and, perhaps, figured 
 more conspicuously in the living woods than in the dead coal 
 beds namely, the conifers ; but this, again, is held as the 
 lowest family of its class. That many trees of higher families 
 now existed, seems unlikely, when we learn that such trees 
 occur in considerable numbers in subsequent formations, 
 showing that there was nothing positively to forbid their being 
 preserved in the coal measures, if they had then existed. 
 
 The master-form or type of the era was the fern, or 
 breckan, of which about one hundred and thirty species have 
 
46 CARBONIGENOUS ERA. 
 
 been ascertained as entering into the composition of coal. 
 The ferns are plants which thrive best in warm, shaded, and 
 moist situations. In tropical countries, where these condi- 
 tions abound, there are many more species than in temperate 
 climes, and some of these are arborescent, or of a tree-like 
 size and luxuriance. ( 25 ) The ferns of the coal strata have 
 been of this magnitude, and that without regard to the regions 
 of the earth where they are found. In the coal of Baffin's 
 Bay, of Newcastle, and of the torrid zone, alike, are the 
 fossil ferns arborescent, showing that, in that era, the present 
 tropical temperature, or one even higher, existed in very high 
 latitudes. 
 
 In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant 
 called the horse-tail, (cquisetum^) having a succulent, erect, 
 jointed stem, with slender leaves, and a scaly catkin at the 
 top. A second large section of the plants of the carboniferous 
 era were of this kind, (equisetacece,} but, like the ferns, reach- 
 ing the magnitudes of trees. While existing equiseta rarely 
 exceed three feet in height, and the stems are generally under 
 half an inch in diameter, their kindred, entombed in the coal 
 beds, seem to have been generally fourteen or fifteen feet 
 high, with stems from six inches to a foot in thickness. It is 
 to be remarked that plants of this kind (forming two genera, 
 the most abundant of which is the calamites) are only 
 represented on the present surface by plants of the same 
 family : the species which flourished at this era gradually 
 lessen in number as we advance upwards in the series of rocks, 
 and disappear before we arrive at the tertiary formation. 
 
 The club-moss family (lycopodiacece) are other plants of the 
 present surface, usually seen in a lowly and creeping form in 
 temperate latitudes, but presenting species which rise to a 
 greater magnitude within the tropics. Many specimens of 
 this family are found in the coal beds ; it is thought they 
 have contributed more to the substance of the coal than any 
 other family. But, like the ferns and equisetaceae, they rise 
 to a prodigious magnitude. The lepidodrendon (so the fossil 
 genus is called, from the scaly exterior) has probably been 
 from sixty-five to eighty feet in height, having at the base a 
 
COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 47 
 
 diameter of about three feet, while the leaves measured 
 twenty inches in length. In the forests of the coal era, the 
 lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of firs in our forests, 
 affording shade to the only less stately ferns and calamites. 
 The internal structure of the stem, and the character of the 
 seed-vessels, show them to have been a link between single- 
 lobed and double-lobed plants a fact worthy of note, as it 
 favours the idea of a progress in vegetable creation, in the 
 line of an improved organization. It is also curious to find a 
 missing link of so much importance in a genus of plants 
 which has long ceased to have a living place upon earth. 
 
 The other leading plants of the coal era are without re- 
 presentatives on the present surface, and their characters are 
 in general less clearly ascertained. Amongst the most re- 
 markable are the sigillaria, of which large stems are very 
 abundant, showing that the interior has been soft, and the 
 exterior fluted, with separate leaves inserted in vertical rows 
 along the flutings and the stigmaria, a plant apparently cal- 
 culated to flourish in marshes, or pools, having a short, thick, 
 fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from which sprung 
 branches of from twenty to thirty feet long. Amongst mono- 
 cotyledons were some palms, (flabellaria and nceggerathia?) 
 besides a few not distinctly assignable to any class. 
 
 The conifers of the coal are comparatively rare, and are 
 only as yet found in isolated cases, and in sandstone beds. 
 One discovered in the Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, 
 consisted of a stem about two feet thick, and forty-seven feet 
 in length. Others were afterwards found, both in the same 
 situation, and at Newcastle. Leaves and fruit, being wanting, 
 an ingenious mode of detecting the nature of these trees was de- 
 . vised by some naturalists residing in the northern capital.( 26 ) 
 Taking thin polished cross slices of the stem, and sub- 
 jecting them to the microscope, they detected the structure of 
 the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree, by the presence of 
 certain " reticulations" which distinguish that family, in addi- 
 tion to the usual radiating and concentric lines. That par- 
 ticular tree was concluded to be an araucaria, a species now 
 found in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea, and in a few other 
 
48 CARBONIGENOUS ERA. 
 
 remote situations. The conifers of this era may be said to 
 form the dawn of dicotyledonous trees, to which, it has 
 already been noticed, the lepidodendra are a link from the 
 monocotyledons. The concentric rings of the Craigleith and 
 other conifers of this era have been mentioned. It is inte- 
 resting to find in these a record of the changing seasons of 
 those early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to 
 observe time or tide. The rings are clearly traced ; but it is 
 observed that they are more slightly marked than is the case 
 with their family at the present day, as if the changes of 
 temperature had been within a narrower range. 
 
 Such (if we are to be allowed to rest with positive evi- 
 dence) was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, com- 
 posed of forms low in the botanical scale, mostly flowerless 
 and fruitless, but luxuriant and abundant beyond what the 
 most favoured spots on earth can now show. The rigidity of 
 the leaves of its plants, and the absence of fleshy fruits and 
 farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals ; 
 and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant colour- 
 ing, its sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller 
 flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the music of birds, 
 it must have been a sombre scene to a human visitant. But 
 neither man nor any other animals were then in existence to 
 look for such uses or such beauties in this vegetation. It was 
 serving other and equally important ends, clearing perhaps 
 the atmosphere of matter noxious to animal life, and certainly 
 storing up mineral masses which were in long subsequent 
 ages to prove of the greatest service to the human race, even 
 to the extent of favouring the progress of its civilization. 
 
 Traces of land plants previous to the Carboniferous era 
 are isolated at the best, and, till we know more about them, 
 they cannot be allowed greatly to affect our views of the 
 botanical history of the globe. Geologists speak of a fern 
 leaf in the Silurians of Wales ; in those of America, a plant 
 apparently allied to the lepidodendron ; in the American 
 lower Devonian, some allied to ferns. These phenomena, if 
 fully established, would not interfere with general deductions 
 from the mass of early land vegetation found in the coal 
 
COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 49 
 
 era. There might be patches of vegetation long before the 
 time of the great coal flora ; and from such pieces of land 
 might those early specimens have been wafted. 
 
 The Carboniferous formation exhibits a scanty zoology 
 compared with either those which go before, or those which 
 come after. The mountain limestone, indeed, deposited at 
 the commencement of it, abounds unusually in polypiaria, 
 crinoidea, and mollusca ; but when we ascend to the coal- 
 beds themselves, the case is altered. We have then only a 
 limited variety of shell mollusks, with fragments of a few 
 species of fishes, and these are rarely or never found in the coal 
 seams, but in the shales alternating with them. Among the 
 fishes, the conspicuous form is the Sauroid family, which receives 
 its name in consequence of a character of teeth, scales, and 
 even osteology, resembling that of the Sauria, and evidently 
 leading on to that section of reptiles. ( 27 ) One of the most 
 noted species is the Megalichthys Hibbertii, discovered by 
 Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed at Burdiehouse, near 
 Edinburgh, and of which other specimens have been found in 
 the coal measures of Yorkshire, and low coal shales of New- 
 castle. The enormous size of the animal is inferred from 
 teeth belonging to it, not less than four inches long. At this 
 point we find the first traces of land animals, in the fossil re- 
 mains of terrestrial insects ( 28 ) and the foot-prints of reptiles, 
 the first in England, the latter in America. ( ?9 ) 
 
 Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the 
 carboniferous formation. Thin beds are not unknown after- 
 wards, but they occur only as a rare exception. It is there- 
 fore thought that the most important of the conditions which 
 allowed of so abundant a terrestrial vegetation whatever 
 these were had ceased about the time when this formation 
 was completed. 
 
 The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked 
 in some regions by symptoms of great disturbance. Coal- 
 beds generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the 
 bottom of seas. There is no such basin which is not broken 
 up into pieces, some of which have been tossed up on edge, 
 others allowed to sink, causing the ends of strata to be in 
 
50 PERMIAN ERA. 
 
 some instances many yards, and in a few, several hundred 
 feet, removed from the corresponding ends of neighbouring 
 fragments. These are held to be results of volcanic move- 
 ments below, the operation of which is further seen in nume- 
 rous upbursts and intrusions of fire-born rock, (trap.) That 
 these disturbances took place about the close of the formation, 
 and not later, is shown in the fact of the next higher group of 
 strata being comparatively undisturbed. Other symptoms of 
 this time of violence are seen in the beds of conglomerate 
 which occur amongst the first strata above the coal. These, 
 as usual, consist of fragments of the elder rocks, more or less 
 worn from being tumbled about in agitated water, and laid 
 down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened. ( 30 ) It is to be 
 admitted for strict truth, that in some parts of Europe the 
 carboniferous formation is followed by superior deposits, 
 without the appearance of such disturbances between their 
 respective periods; but such cases apparently are exceptive. 
 
 PERMIAN ERA. FIRST TRACES OF REPTILES. 
 
 IN this subordinate manner, may be noticed a short series of 
 strata, following, whether conformably or otherwise, upon the 
 carboniferous formation, and to which a general name has 
 been applied, from its being unusually well developed in the 
 portion of Russia which formed the ancient kingdom of 
 Permia. This sub-formation comprehending in ascending 
 order a group of sandstones, called with us the Lower New 
 Red Sandstones, and amongst the Germans Rothe-todte- 
 liegende ( 31 ) a thick calcareous bed called with us the 
 Magnesian Limestone, by the Germans Zechstein, and some 
 other strata is, in respect of fossils, a continuation of the 
 carboniferous system. With it, however, ends a range of 
 animal forms which first appeared in the Silurians, and passed, 
 with the changes which have been indicated, through the 
 Devonian and Carbonigenous eras. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF REPTILES. 51 
 
 The total number of specific forms, which had heen dimi- 
 nishing in the carbonigenous era, is in this still further 
 reduced ; one recent author says, from about a thousand to a 
 hundred and sixty-six, of which only eighteen are common 
 to the inferior strata. ( 32 ) It appears as if, while some new 
 species continued to present themselves, the animal kingdom 
 were now generally undergoing a decay, for even specimens of 
 particular families are less abundant than formerly. Instead, 
 for example, of the hundred species of corals of the carbonifer- 
 ous formation, there were now only fifteen, and of these but 
 three or four abundant. Of the numerous crinoidea of the 
 past, but one now remained, and this is rarely found. The 
 trilobite has now vanished, to appear no more. For hundreds 
 of brachiopods, there were now only thirty, ten of them old. 
 The cephalopods almost disappear at the very commencement 
 of the Permian era. 
 
 It cannot at present be determined whether this diminution 
 of fossils is owing to an actual reduction of the amount of life 
 in the ancient seas, or only to some such simple cause as the 
 occurrence of deposits which were not favourable to the pre- 
 servation of animal remains. It may even be that the prin- 
 cipal cemeteries of the age have not yet been hit upon by 
 research ; for certainly this is neither the most extensively 
 nor the most rigidly examined of the various formations, and 
 we are made the more suspicious by finding that, at this part 
 of the rock series, several important fossiliferous strata are 
 present in one region and not in others. It has been ascer- 
 tained, however, by Permian researches, that extensive 
 changes of specific forms in the ancient seas were not, as has 
 been supposed, necessarily and essentially connected with 
 great physical disturbances ; for both do we find that the un- 
 conformability of strata or memorials of disturbance between 
 the carboniferous and Permian do not affect the fossils, 
 and that a conformable succession of strata over the Permian 
 is attended by a great usually called a complete change of 
 species. At this termination of the Permian, modern geolo- 
 gists close what they call the Palaeozoic Period, on a suppo- 
 sit'on that an ancient creation had now passed away, to givo 
 
 B2 
 
52 PERMIAN ERA. 
 
 place to one entirely new. And this view is eagerly embraced 
 by those who argue for repeated interferences of creative 
 power. But not only is such a notion discountenanced by the 
 nature of the subsequent organisms, an advance to higher 
 species of particular classes, and to a new class the next in 
 the animal scale, but it is utterly overthrown by the recent 
 discovery of plants in the higher formations, (Trias of France 
 and certain Liassic beds in the Alps,) identical with carboni- 
 ferous species. Where such changes of fossils occur, the more 
 reasonable supposition is, that notwithstanding conformable- 
 ness of strata, a local suspension of deposits for a considerable 
 time is indicated, a time during which the usual changes of 
 species were proceeding, probably at their usual rate, and 
 which was sufficient to present something like a complete 
 change of forms when the deposits were re-commenced. ( 33 ) 
 
 In the Permian formation, besides the principal orders of 
 animals which previously existed, we have the first undoubted 
 traces of another, succeeding fish in the animal scale, namely, 
 Reptiles- 
 
 This is a most important event in our history, for it gives 
 us, for the first time, a class of vertebrate animals capable of 
 breathing the atmosphere and walking upon the land. We 
 shall presently see that it was a class destined for a long suc- 
 cession of ages to flourish over the soil, in many various and 
 some most formidable shapes, and without any superiors to 
 keep them in check. As yet, but a few bones of reptiles have 
 been discovered in the Zechstein of Thuringia in Upper 
 Saxony, and in quarries near Bristol. By Professor Owen, 
 who has carefully examined them, they are said to be 
 of the lacertilian or lizard order (specifically called by him, 
 palseosaurs, thecodonts, monitors, &c.), but for the most part 
 of gigantic size, and differing from modern lizards in very re- 
 markable characters of the vertebrae, teeth, and dermal plates. 
 To them, as to all the reptiles of this and several subsequent 
 great periods, belonged a fish-like form of the vertebral 
 column, in as far as its component bones were biconcave, or 
 shaped like a double egg-cup, a peculiarity regarded by this 
 eminent anatomist as probably fitting the animal for partially 
 
FIRST TRACES OF REPTILES. 53 
 
 marine habits. And that the full importance of this pecu- 
 liarity of the early reptiles may be appreciated, the reader 
 must be made aware that modern reptiles have a ball-and- 
 socket form of the vertebrae that is, a convexity at the one 
 side fitting into the hollow of the adjacent bone ; but this 
 form only when they are mature animals, for in the embryotic 
 state of the crocodile and of the frog the form has been ascer- 
 tained to be biconcave, which gradually changes as the 
 animal approaches perfection. The teeth of the thecodonts 
 and palaeosaurs were fixed in distinct sockets, like those of 
 the modern crocodiles. In this respect, they were superior 
 to the modern varanians, the nearest living tribes, which have 
 the teeth imbedded in comparatively shallow cavities along 
 the bottom of a groove in the jaw. 
 
54 
 
 ERA OF THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 REPTILES ABUNDANT. FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS AND 
 
 MAMMALIA. 
 
 GEOLOGISTS now apply the term Secondary Formation (once 
 of wider application) to those intervening between the end of 
 the Permian or close of what they call the Palaeozoic Period, 
 and the termination of the Chalk Series, afterwards to be 
 described, at which place there is another and almost total 
 change of specific forms. The first of these formations is 
 called with us the Upper New Red Sandstone ; it consists, in 
 England, of only a group of strata of that kind, surmounted 
 by some variegated marls. But on the Continent, below a 
 stratum equivalent to these marls, there is one of limestone, 
 bearing the name of the Muschelkalk, and full of shells. The 
 system is there called Trias, on account of its thus consisting 
 of a triple group of strata. 
 
 TRIAS. 
 
 THE organic relics of this system are most abundant in the 
 Muschelkalk. There we are presented with a great number 
 of crinoids and shells, all differing in specific character from 
 their predecessors of the same orders. The crinoid called, 
 from its elegant lily-like shape, Encrinites Moniliformis, is a 
 conspicuous fossil. The brachiopods, here almost extinct, are 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 55 
 
 replaced by ostraceae of various genera a change from the 
 animals of deep to those of shallow seas. The univalve mol- 
 lusks also indicate a condition of the sea advancing towards 
 that which exists near the present shores. In the new forms 
 of cephalopoda were some marking their advanced character 
 by their non-possession of a shell or stony skeleton. In this 
 case, the existence of the animal is only betrayed by its horny 
 mandible, constituting the fossils called rhynchulites. 
 
 We find in this system further traces, but still obscure and 
 local, of the reptilian class. Before proceeding to speak of 
 them, it is necessary to remark that the ingredients and ar- 
 rangements of rocks, with fossil remains, do not form the sole 
 materials of the history compiled by the geologist. He is 
 equally contented when he can find an intelligible fact told 
 by what may be called a writing of nature upon these stone 
 tablets. So low as the bottom of the carboniferous system, 
 slabs are found marked over a great extent of surface with 
 that peculiar corrugation or wrinkling which the receding 
 tide leaves upon a sandy beach when the sea is but slightly 
 agitated ; and not only are these ripple-marks, as they are 
 called, found on the surfaces, but casts of them appear on the 
 under sides of slabs lying above. The phenomena suggest the 
 time when the sand, ultimately formed into these stone slabs, 
 was part of the beach of a sea of the carbonigenous era ; when, 
 left wavy by one tide, it was covered over with athin layer of fresh 
 sand by the next, and so on, precisely as such circumstances 
 might be expected to take place at the present day. Sandstone 
 surfaces, ripple-marked, present themselves throughout the sub- 
 sequent formations : in those of the New Red, at more than one 
 place in England, they further bear impressions of rain-drops 
 which have fallen upon them the rain, of course, of the incon- 
 ceivably remote age in which the sandstones were formed. In 
 the Greensill sandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has even been 
 possible to tell from what direction the shower came which 
 impressed the sandy surface, the rims of the marks being 
 somewhat raised on one side, exactly as might be expected 
 from a slanting shower falling at this day upon one of our 
 beaches. These facts have the same kind of interest as the 
 
56 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 season rings of the Craigleith conifers, speaking of the 
 identity of the familiar processes of nature in those early ages 
 with those of our own. 
 
 Hearing of memorials of this kind will prepare the reader 
 to learn that the earliest intelligence we have respecting land- 
 walking animals consists, in great part, of their mere foot- 
 steps, impressed on the wet sand or mud, which afterwards 
 became rock. Let no one undervalue such testimony. The 
 fidelity of an impression from a foot, as certifying by what 
 or whose foot the impression was made, is acknowledged in 
 judicial procedure ; and often has this kind of evidence fixed 
 the opinion of judge and jury, when every other has failed. 
 
 So much being premised, we proceed to examine the 
 Triassic reptiles. In the lower beds of the upper new red 
 sandstone, near Shrewsbury, we are introduced to a new 
 lacertilian, presenting some remarkable characters, and 
 named the Hhynchosaurus. From the few fragments of the 
 animal which have been discovered, it would appear to 
 have had a toothless head, resembling that of a bird, and en- 
 closed in a bony sheath ; also a hinder toe directed back- 
 wards, in which feature we also see an assimilation to the 
 next higher vertebrate class. Footmarks, impressed in the 
 way which has been described, and attributed to this animal, 
 confirm the appearances presented by the extraordinary ar- 
 rangement of its locomotive organs. 
 
 In the same beds occur a few bones, and a great number of 
 footsteps, which Professor Owen has fixed as the double me- 
 morials of a group of animals, to which he has given (from 
 the structure of their teeth) the name of Labyrinthodonts, 
 and which he classes with the JBatrachia, that order of rep- 
 tiles to which the frog and toad belong. Those who are ac- 
 customed to regard this as a group of generally small and 
 insignificant animals, will be surprised to learn that the laby- 
 rinthodonts were of the size of a large hog. Their footmarks, 
 discovered alike in America and the elder continent, " bear a 
 singular resemblance to the impression that would be made by 
 the palm and expanded fingers and thumb of the human hand." 
 But it is evident that the four extremities of the animal had 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 57 
 
 been, like those of the kangaroo and some other genera, much 
 smaller than the hinder, some specimens of which measure 
 eight inches by five. These batrachia present affinities to 
 the fish class in their biconcave vertebrae and the formation 
 and arrangement of the teeth. Their nostrils being also, like 
 those of the Sauria, placed near the extremity of the head, 
 indicate a partially marine habitat, such an arrangement 
 being required to enable the animal to breathe while nearly 
 altogether sunk in the water. 
 
 Quarries of the red sandstone of this system also present 
 an abundance of footmarks attributed to tortoises, thus point- 
 ing to the contemporaneous existence of a third order of rep- 
 tiles, the Chelonia. The first examples were discovered by 
 the Rev. Dr. Duncan in the quarry of Corncockle Muir, Dum- 
 friesshire, where the slabs incline at an angle of thirty-eight 
 degrees, and the footmarks are distinctly traced up and down 
 the slope, as if, when the surfaces w r ere those of a beach at, 
 however, a lower inclination the animal had had occasion to 
 pass only in that direction, in its daily visits to the sea. Some 
 slabs similarly impressed, in the Stourton quarries, Cheshire, 
 are further marked with a shower of rain which we know to 
 have fallen afterwards, for its little hollows are impressed in 
 the footmarks also, though more slightly than on the rest of 
 the surface, the comparative hardness of a trodden place having 
 apparently prevented so deep an impression being made. 
 
 It is in the celebrated Muschelkalk that, for the first time, 
 we find examples of a group of reptiles which have excited 
 more attention than perhaps any other fossil animals. The 
 same group, it may be remarked, occurs in the English lias 
 and subsequent formations ; but the mere fact of writing in 
 England should not make us postpone to that place an order 
 of beings which we find earlier in another portion of what, 
 geologically, may be regarded as but one great zoological 
 province. These animals, called collectively Enaliosauria, 
 or Marine Saurians, abounded throughout a long period of 
 the earth's history, while mammalian life was yet hardly de- 
 veloped ; but they disappeared in what we shall have to speak 
 of as the Cretaceous Era. The Ichthyosaur, of which ten 
 
58 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 species have been distinguished, was an animal of marine 
 habits and great bulk, (reaching about thirty feet in length,) 
 in which to the form of the fish there were united, in a re- 
 markable way, characters of animals higher in the scale. A 
 body, framed upon a purely piscine vertebral column, con- 
 taining a huge voracious stomach, and terminating in a ver- 
 tically expanded tail, in which respect it also preserved the 
 fish character, was furnished with the head of a crocodile, and 
 four fins approximating to the character of the paddles of the 
 whale, but composed of a greater number of bones, and thus 
 showing an affinity to the fins of fishes. Over all was a skin 
 resembling that of the cetaceous animals. Nor should it be 
 omitted that the sternum or breast-bone presents a structure 
 resembling that of the ornithorhynchus or duck-rat of Aus- 
 tralia. The vast jaws of this animal, having a stretch of seven 
 feet ; its eye resting in a socket eighteen inches in diameter, 
 and defended by an apparatus of bony plates, like that of a 
 bird of prey ; the powerful range of teeth, and the position 
 of the breathing apertures near the extremity of the snout ; 
 all speak to the naturalist of ferocious habits like those of the 
 modern crocodile, to which the ichthyosaur may be considered 
 as a link from the predaceous fish. A curious light has been 
 thrown upon these habits by the pellets voided by the animal, 
 which have been found in great quantities in a fossilized 
 state, and bear the name of coprolites. In these we find 
 fragments not only of fish, but of reptiles, arguing that 
 the animal must have been a destructive creature both to its 
 own class and to that below it. 
 
 The genus next in importance is the Plesiosaurus, so called 
 as being near to the saurian character. This animal was 
 under eighteen feet long, and altogether a feebler creature 
 than the Ichthyosaur, which seems to have made it a prey. 
 Yet it was itself one of the destructive potentates of the early 
 seas. A body, generally fish-like, though framed on vertebrae 
 presenting less concave ends, and which terminated in a short 
 tail, serving only as a rudder, was furnished with a long neck 
 and small head, together with four slender paddles, more 
 cetacean than those of the Ichthyosaur. Moving, like that 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 59 
 
 animal, quickly in the water, by means of the special organs 
 designed for the purpose, the Plesiosaur would have a further 
 advantage in its long, flexible, serpent-like neck ; but the 
 small size of the head, though there we find the same superior 
 arrangement of teeth seen in the thecodonts, must have rendered 
 it a much less formidable creature than that last described. 
 Professor Owen regards it as fitted to live near shores and to 
 ascend estuaries. 
 
 The attention of the geologists of the United States has 
 been called to certain footmarks in the sandstones of the 
 valley of Connecticut, indicative, as they think, of birds of 
 the orders Grallatores (waders) and Rasores (scrapers.) 
 " The footsteps appear in regular succession on the continuous 
 track of an animal, in the act of walking or running, with the 
 right and left foot always in their relative places. The dis- 
 tance of the intervals between each footstep on the same track 
 is occasionaHy varied, but to no greater amount than may be ex- 
 plained by the bird having altered its pace. Many tracks of dif- 
 ferent individuals and different species are often found crossing 
 each other, and crowded, like impressions of feet upon the 
 shores of a muddy stream, where ducks and geese resort." ( 34 ) 
 Some of these prints indicate small animals, but others denote 
 birds of what would now be an unusually large size, one having 
 a foot fifteen inches in length, and a stride of from four to six 
 feet. There are anomalies in the forms of some of the feet ; 
 but their being the vestiges of birds has for some years been 
 generally admitted. There is, however, some uncertainty re- 
 garding the date of the rocks which present these memorials, 
 for the phenomena of superposition only denote their being 
 between the carboniferous and cretaceous formations, and an 
 exact place is assigned them, merely upon the strength of the 
 discovery that they present fish of certain genera never found 
 above the Triassic series. Along with distinctly ornithic 
 footmarks are those of the Labyrinthodont. Altogether, above 
 thirty species of Triassic birds are made out from these ves- 
 tiges by American geologists. 
 
60 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 THE chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, 
 mostly calcareous, taking their general name (Oolite system) 
 from a conspicuous member of them the oolite a limestone 
 composed of an aggregation of small round grains or spherules, 
 and so called from its fancied resemblance to a cluster of eggs, 
 or the roe of a fish. This texture of stone is novel and striking. 
 It is supposed to be of chemical origin, each spherule being 
 an aggregation of particles round a central nucleus. The oolite 
 system is largely developed in England, France, Westphalia, 
 and Northern Italy ; it appears in Northern India and Africa, 
 and patches of it exist in Scotland, and in the vale of the 
 Mississippi. It may of course be yet discovered in many 
 other parts of the world. 
 
 The series, as shown in the neighbourhood of Bath, is 
 (beginning with the lowest) as follows: 1. Lias, a set of 
 strata variously composed of limestone, clay, marl, and shale, 
 clay being predominant; 2. Lower oolitic formation, in- 
 cluding, besides the great oolitic bed of central England, 
 fullers'-earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash ; 3. Middle 
 oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxford 
 clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works 
 of the coral polype ; 4. Upper oolitic formation, including 
 what are called Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite. In 
 Yorkshire there is an additional group above the lias, and in 
 Sutherlandshire there is another group above that again. In 
 the wealds (moorlands) of Kent and Sussex, there is, in like 
 manner, above the fourth of the Bath series, another addi- 
 tional group, to which the name of the Wealden has been 
 given, from its topographical situation, and which, composed 
 of sandstones and clays, is subdivided into Purbeck beds, 
 Hastings sand, and Weald clay. 
 
 There are no particular appearances of disturbance between 
 the close of the Trias, and the beginning of the Lias and Oolite 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 61 
 
 system, as far as has been observed in England. Yet there is 
 a great change in the materials of the rocks of the two forma- 
 tions, showing that, while the bottoms of the seas of the one 
 period had been chiefly arenaceous, those of the other were 
 chiefly clayey and limy. And there is an equal difference 
 between the two periods in respect of both botany and 
 zoology. While the Permian and Triassic systems, with the 
 single exception of the Muschelkalk, show comparatively 
 scanty traces of life, those in the lias and oolite are extremely 
 abundant, particularly in the department of animals, and 
 more particularly still of sea mollusca. The distinguishing 
 characters of the zoology appear to be uniform over a great 
 space. " In the equivalent deposits in the Himalayan Moun- 
 tains, at Fernando Po, in the region north of the Cape of 
 Good Hope, and in the Run of Cutch, and other parts of 
 Hindostan, fossils have been discovered, which, as far as 
 English naturalists who have seen them can determine, 
 are undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils of 
 Europe. ( 33 ) 
 
 The dry land of this age presented cycadese, " a beautiful 
 class of plants between the palms and conifers, having a 
 tall, straight trunk, terminating in a magnificent crown of 
 foliage." ( 36 ) There were tree ferns, but in smaller pro- 
 portion than in former ages ; also equisetaceae, lilia, and 
 coniferse. The vegetation was generally analogous to that of 
 the Cape of Good Hope and Australia, which seems to argue 
 a climate between the tropical and temperate. It was, how- 
 ever, sufficiently luxuriant, in some instances, to produce thin 
 seams of coal, for there are such in the oolite formation of 
 both Yorkshire and Sutherland. The sea, as for ages before, 
 contained algae, of which, however, only a few species have 
 been preserved to our day. 
 
 The lower marine animals present themselves in great 
 abundance, and in some interesting varieties of form. Corals, 
 absent in the lias, reappear in the oolite in quantity sufficient, 
 at some places, as we have seen, to constitute entire strata. 
 The crinoids are also numerous, and amongst these are new 
 genera showing an advance of organization from those of 
 
62 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 preceding systems. The pentacrinite, instead of a round, has 
 a five-angled stalk, with an increased profusion of tentacula ; 
 it had also the superior character of a power to float about, 
 and attach itself where it pleased. To this fossil of the lias 
 succeed others of the same family in the oolite comatula arid 
 ophiura which are entirely free-swimming, thus supporting 
 the general appearances of an advance of animal characters as 
 we proceed from lower to higher formations. Here also 
 appear other examples of the order to which the crinoidea 
 belong (echinodermata) ; namely, the echinus, or sea-urchin, 
 and the goniaster, which last is regarded as a link between 
 the echinus and star-fish. 
 
 Among the crustaceans of the oolite, a conspicuous place is 
 due to the limulus, or king-crab, of which several species 
 occur in this formation. This animal is remarkable as the 
 genus of our time to which the trilobite makes the nearest 
 approach ; and the appearance of the limulus at the time 
 when the trilobite vanishes, (the carbonigenous era,) is 
 spoken of by a distinguished geologist as " one of those 
 beautiful links in natural history, of which the strata forming 
 the earth's crust have afforded so many proofs." ( 37 ) Here 
 also we have, in the eryon, an early example of the highest 
 crustacean order, (decapoda,) and one to which the modern 
 lobster and cray-fish belong. Insects resembling the dragon- 
 fly have been found in the oolite. 
 
 The deeper oolitic seas were occupied by various species of 
 terebratula, a brachiopodous mollusk remarkable as having 
 lived in one form or another from the earliest to the present 
 time. In the shallower seas were other bivalves. There was 
 also abundance of all the univalve classes, Pteropoda, Gastero- 
 poda, and Cephalopoda. Of the last we see an advance of 
 characters in the ammonites and belemnites, which now 
 appear in many varieties. The belemnite, which belonged 
 to the higher order of the class, those having only two 
 branchiae, calls fur some particular notice. It is an elongated, 
 conical shell, terminating in a point, and having, at the larger 
 end, a cavity for the residence of the animal, with a series of 
 air-chambers below. The animal, placed in the upper cavity, 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 63 
 
 could raise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a 
 pneumatic operation upon the air tube pervading its shell. 
 Its tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the shell, 
 searched the sea for prey. The creature had an ink bag with 
 which it could muddle the water around it, to protect itself 
 from more powerful animals, and strange to say, this has 
 been found so well preserved, that an artist has used it in one 
 instance as a pigment, wherewith to delineate the belemnite 
 itself. 
 
 There are many fishes, some of which (acrodus, psammodus, 
 &c.) are presumed, from remains of their palatal bones, to 
 have been of the gigantic cartilaginous class, (placoidean,) 
 now represented by such as the cestraceon. It has been con- 
 sidered by Professor Owen as worthy of notice, that, the 
 cestraceori being an inhabitant of the Australian seas, we 
 have, in both the botany and ichthyology of this period, an 
 analogy to that Continent. The pycnodontes, (thick toothed,) 
 and lepidoides, (having thick scales,) are other families de- 
 scribed by M. Agassiz as extensively prevalent. 
 
 In the English lias there is a vast abundance of the enalio- 
 sauria which we have seen commence in the foreign Mus- 
 chelkalk, and, in addition to these, specimens of Pterosauria 
 or Winged Saurians, a type of being, the most new, perhaps, 
 of all which the geological record has presented to us. The 
 Pterodactyls, as the animals of this order have been called, 
 were saurians of small size compared with their associates, 
 being not larger than a modern cormorant ; but the marvel 
 in their case consists in bat-Lke wings extended upon the 
 fore- finger, by which the animal was enabled to pursue its 
 way in the air. This order became extinct in the time of the 
 chalk formation. The only existing animal of which it may 
 even remind us is the draco volans or flying lizard, which 
 has a membrane by which to support itself in leaping from 
 tree to tree. 
 
 In the proper oolite, there is added an enaliosaurian (the 
 Pliosaur} in which there is a very close approach made to 
 the crocodilian order, but upon a scale of enormous mag- 
 nitude, the animd having apparently been as large as the ex- 
 
64 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 isting whales. Here, too, we find the true crocodilia largely 
 developed, and five genera have been described, (Teleosaurus, 
 Steneosaurus, Cetiosaurus, &c.) The two first are like croco- 
 diles of our own time in all respects, except a somewhat greater 
 bulk, and certain peculiarities, indicating more aquatic 
 habits. The last derives its name from the approximation to 
 the whale tribes seen in the form of its vertebrae. In this 
 group there is a genus presenting ball-and-socket vertebrae, 
 and thus proving its advanced character ; but, strange to say, 
 the concavity is in this case directed backwards, instead of 
 forwards, which is the universal arrangement in similar cases, 
 in our era. 
 
 The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub- 
 kingdom Mammalia is obtained from the Stonesfield slate, 
 where there have been found several specimens of the lower 
 jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insectivorous, and inferred, 
 from peculiarities of structure, to have belonged to the marsu- 
 pial family, (pouched animals.) ( 3S ) It may be observed, 
 although no specimens of so high a class of animals as mam- 
 malia are found earlier, such may nevertheless have existed : 
 the defect may be in our not having found them ; but, other 
 things considered, the probability is that heretofore there 
 were no mammifers. It is an interesting circumstance that 
 the first mammifers found should have belonged to the mar- 
 supialia, when the place of that order in the scale of creation 
 is considered. In the imperfect structure of their brain, 
 deficient in the organs connecting the two hemispheres and 
 in the mode of gestation, which is only in small part uterine 
 this family is usually regarded as only a little advanced above 
 the character of the bird. 
 
 The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some 
 phenomena of an unusual and interesting character, which 
 demand special notice. Immediately above the upper oolitic 
 group in Buckinghamshire, in the vicinity of Weymouth, 
 and other situations, there is a thin stratum, usually called by 
 workmen the dirt-bed, which appears, from incontestable evi- 
 dence, to have been a soil formed, like soils of the present day, 
 in the course of time, upon a surface which had previously 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 65 
 
 been the bottom of the sea. The dirt-bed contains exuviae 
 of tropical trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed 
 its honours on the spot where it grew, and became itself 
 decayed. Near Weymouth there is a piece of this stratum, 
 in which stumps of trees remain rooted, mostly erect or 
 slightly inclined, and from one to three feet high ; while 
 trunks of the same forest, also silicified, lie imbedded on the 
 surface of the soil in which they grew. 
 
 Above this bed lie those which have been called the 
 Wealden, from their full development in the Weald of Sussex ; 
 and these as incontestable argue that the dry land forming 
 the dirt-bed had next afterwards become the area of brackish 
 estuaries or lakes partially connected with the sea ; for the 
 Wealden strata contain exuviae of fresh- water tribes, besides 
 those of the great saurians and chelonia. The area of this 
 estuary comprehends the whole south-east province of Eng- 
 land. A geologist thus confidently narrates the subsequent 
 events : " Much calcareous matter was first deposited [in this 
 estuary], and in it were entombed myriads of shells, appa- 
 rently analogous to those of the vivipara. Then came a thick 
 envelope of sand, sometimes interstratified with mud ; and, 
 finally, muddy matter prevailed. The solid surface beneath 
 the waters would appear to have suffered a long continued 
 and gradual depression, which was as gradually filled, or 
 nearly so, with transported matter ; in the end, however, after 
 a depression of several hundred feet, the sea again entered 
 upon the area, not suddenly or violently for the Wealden 
 rocks pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous 
 series but so quietly, that the mud containing the remains 
 of terrestrial and fresh-water creatures was tranquilly 
 covered up by sands replete with marine exuviae." ( 39 ) A 
 subsequent depression of the same area, to the depth of at 
 least three hundred fathoms, is believed to have taken place, 
 to admit of the deposition of the cretaceous beds lying above. 
 From the scattered way in which remains of the larger 
 terrestrial animals occur in the Wealden, and the intermix- 
 ture of pebbles of the special appearance of those worn in 
 rivers, it is also inferred that the estuary which once covered 
 
 r 
 
66 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 the south-east part of England was the mouth of a river of 
 that far-descending class of which the Mississippi and Amazon 
 are examples. What part of the earth's surface presented 
 the dry land through which that and other similar rivers 
 flowed, no one can tell. It has been surmised, that the par- 
 ticular one here spoken of may have flowed from a point not 
 nearer than the site of the present Newfoundland. Professor 
 Phillips has suggested, from the analogy of the mineral com- 
 position, that anciently elevated coal strata may have com- 
 posed the dry land from which the sandy matters of these 
 strata were washed. Such a deposit as the Wealden almost 
 necessarily implies a local, not a general condition ; yet it has 
 been thought that similar strata and remains exist in the Pays 
 de Bray, near Beauvais. This leads to the supposition that 
 there may have been, in that age, a series of river-receiving 
 estuaries along the border of some such great ocean as the 
 Atlantic, of which that of modern Sussex is only an example. 
 The zoology of the Wealden is chiefly remarkable for the 
 additions which it makes to the list of reptiles presented in 
 previous formations. Besides some new crocodilia (Sucho- 
 saurus and Goniopholis), and several chelonia (Tetrosternon, 
 etc.), we have here the principal constituents of a group, 
 which Professor Owen has described as a distinct order, under 
 the name of Dinosauria, the remaining form being the Mega- 
 losaurm of the oolite. These were terrestrial crocodile-like 
 animals, with some features of organization recalling the 
 lacertilia, and also such a massive and stately form of the ex- 
 tremities, as to remind us of the large land pachyderms. The 
 animal last named, from twenty-five to thirty feet long, with 
 an enormous muzzle furnished with strong teeth, must have 
 been by far the most formidable land creature of its age. The 
 very opposite habits of the Iguanodon, an equally huge herbi- 
 vorous reptile, lead me to suspect an error in the classifica- 
 tion : but passing from this its size and stately limbs are 
 such as equally to excite our surprise. From the scapula or 
 blade-bone of the remaining genus, the Hylceosaurus, the ap- 
 proximation of the whole of the dinosaurs to the mammalian 
 type of structure has been inferred. 
 
REPTILES ABUNDANT. 67 
 
 The imagination eagerly aspires to picture the world of the 
 Oolitic Era, when there were scarcely any living creatures 
 of more exalted character than reptiles. There were then 
 vast tracts of dry land, as now ; their surface bore a luxuriant 
 vegetation of no mean kind. The meteoric agencies, the rise 
 and fall of tides, were common phenomena of that time, as of 
 the present. Day after day, through long drawn ages, the 
 sun passed on his course. Night after night, the sparkling 
 garniture of the sky looked down on this green world. But 
 a being of superhuman intelligence, coming to examine our 
 globe, would have seen all this existing only for fishes and 
 still humbler creatures in the sea, and for reptiles, insects, 
 and perhaps a few birds, and still fewer opossums, upon land. 
 He would have beheld the tyrant sauria pursuing their car- 
 nivorous instincts upon the wave, upon the shore, and even in 
 the air ; huge turtles creeping along the muddy coasts ; still 
 more huge megalosaurs traversing the plain ; frog-like ani- 
 mals of the bulk of modern boars, croaking in the marshes ; 
 and with all this, the air filled with multitudes of insects. 
 But no flocks would have met his eye upon the mountains, 
 no herds quietly roaming in the valleys. He would encounter 
 no tiger or elephant in the jungle. None of the smaller mam- 
 malian quadrupeds, as the dog, the genet, the hedgehog, the 
 hare, the mole, would have presented themselves. And not 
 only were no human beings to be seen, but our supernatural 
 visitant would know that this scene must lie spread out in 
 perfect capability for their reception, during ages upon ages, 
 before such beings were to exist; the stream flowing and 
 glittering in the sun, but not to cheer the eye of man ; the 
 season passing, but not to yield its fruit to him ; the whole 
 jocund earth spread out in unenjoyed beauty, as yet unwitting 
 of the glory and the gloom which human impulses were to 
 bring upon it. How strange to reflect on the contemplations 
 of the supposed visitant. What a vast void ! What a stretch 
 of time before there was to be even a commencement to its 
 proper filling ! And yet the certainty that in good time, in 
 the ripeness of the plans of the mighty Author, the higher 
 animals were to come, and among the last the Creature of 
 r2 
 
68 THE TRIAS AND OOLITE. 
 
 Creatures who, in his infinity of device, was to turn it all to 
 his use the historical being of the world ! It has been sup- 
 posed by some geologists, that there was a special adaptation 
 of the earth at this time to its predominating tenants, as 
 if it presented only low muddy coasts and marshes fit for the 
 residence of reptiles. And it has been thought that this state 
 of the earth is what led to the existence of so many reptiles. 
 But all such speculations rest on insecure grounds. When 
 we consider that the Age of Reptiles, as it has been called, is 
 interposed between an age of fishes and an age of mammals, 
 reptiles being also intermediate to these in the animal scale, 
 we cannot but surmise that the fact depends on some organic 
 law, rather than upon one in physical geography. An obser- 
 vation of some importance to this question is made by Mr. 
 Darwin in his Journal. Describing the Galapagos islands in 
 the Pacific Ocean, where turtles and lizards replace the her- 
 bivorous mammalia, and are the predominating forms of life, 
 he says " The geologist, on hearing this, will probably refer 
 back his mind to the secondary epochs, when lizards, some 
 herbivorous, some carnivorous, and of dimensions comparable 
 only with our existing whales, swarmed on the land and in 
 the sea. It is, therefore, worthy of his observation, that this 
 archipelago, instead of possessing a humid climate and rank 
 vegetation, cannot be considered otherwise than extremely 
 arid, and, for an equatorial region, remarkably temperate." 
 
CRETACEOUS ERA. 
 
 THE record of this period consists of a series of strata, in 
 which chalk beds make a conspicuous appearance, and which 
 is therefore called the Cretaceous System or formation. In 
 England, a long stripe, extending from Yorkshire to Kent, 
 presents the cretaceous beds upon the surface, generally lying 
 conformably upon the oolite, and in many instances rising 
 into bold escarpments towards the west. The celebrated 
 cliffs of Dover are of this formation. It extends into Northern 
 France, and thence north-westward into Germany, whence it 
 is traced into Scandinavia and Russia. The same system 
 exists in Xorth America, and probably in other parts of the 
 earth not yet geologically investigated. Being a marine 
 deposit, it establishes that seas existed at the time of its 
 formation on the tracts occupied by it, while some of its 
 organic remains prove that, in the neighbourhood of those 
 seas, there were tracts of dry land. 
 
 The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly 
 sandy in the lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and 
 chiefly of chalk in the upper part, the chalk beds being never 
 absent, which some of the lower are in several places. In the 
 vale of the Mississippi, again, the true chalk is wholly, or all 
 but wholly absent. In the south of England, the lower beds 
 are (reckoning from the lowest upwards), 1. Shankland or 
 greensand, " a triple alternation of sands and sandstones with 
 clay ;" 2. Gait, " a stiff blue or black clay, abounding in 
 shells, which frequently possess a pearly lustre ;" 3. Hard 
 
70 CRETACEOUS ERA. 
 
 chalk ; 4. Chalk with flints ; these two last being generally 
 white, hut in some districts red, and in others yellow. The 
 whole are, in England, about 1200 feet thick, showing the 
 considerable depths of the ocean in which the deposits were 
 made. 
 
 Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its pro- 
 duction in such vast quantities was long a subject of specula- 
 tion among geologists. Some light seemed to be thrown 
 upon the subject a few years ago, when it was observed, that 
 the detritus of coral reefs in the present tropical seas gave a 
 powder, undistinguishable, when dried, from ordinary chalk. 
 It then appeared likely that the chalk beds were the detritus 
 of the corals which lived in the oceans of that era. Mr. Dar- 
 win, who made some curious inquiries on this point, further 
 suggested, that the matter might have intermediately passed 
 through the bodies of worms and fish, such as feed on the 
 corals of the present day, and in whose stomachs he has found 
 impure chalk. This, however, cannot be a full explanation 
 of the production of chalk, if we admit some more recent dis- 
 coveries of Professor Ehrenberg. That master of microscopic 
 investigation announces, that chalk is composed partly of 
 " inorganic particles of irregular elliptical structure and gra- 
 nular slaty disposition," and partly of shells of inconceivable 
 minuteness, " varying from the one-twelfth to the two hun- 
 dred and eighty- eighth part of a line" a cubic inch of the 
 substance containing above ten millions of them ! The chalk 
 of the north of Europe contains, he says, a large proportion 
 of the inorganic matter ; that of the south, a larger proportion 
 of the organic matter, being in some instances almost entirely 
 composed of it. He has been able to classify many of these 
 creatures, some of them being allied to the nautili, nummuli, 
 cyprides, &c. The shells of some are calcareous, of others 
 siliceous. M. Ehrenberg has likewise detected microscopic 
 sea-plants in the chalk. 
 
 The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in 
 England is the presence of flint nodules. These are generally 
 disposed in layers parallel to each other. It was readily pre- 
 
CRETACEOUS ERA. 71 
 
 sumed by geologists that these masses were formed by a 
 chemical aggregation of particles of silica, originally held in 
 solution in the mass of the chalk. But whence the silica in 
 a substance so different from it ? Ehrenberg suggests that 
 it is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portion of the 
 microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other instances 
 detected in their original condition. It is remarkable that 
 the chalk with flint abounds in the north of Europe ; that 
 without flints in the south ; while in the northern chalk 
 siliceous animalcules are wanting, and in the southern present 
 in great quantities. The conclusion seems natural, that in 
 the one case the siliceous exuviae have been left in their 
 original form ; in the other, dissolved chemically, and aggre- 
 gated on the common principle of chemical affinity into 
 nodules of flint, probably concentrating, in every instance, 
 upon a piece of decaying organic matter, as has been the case 
 with the nodules of ironstone in the earlier rocks, and the 
 spherules of the oolite. 
 
 What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained 
 that at least fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of 
 the chalk, being infusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, 
 are still found living in various parts of the earth. These 
 species are the most abundant in the rock. Singly they are 
 the most unimportant of all animals, but in the mass, forming 
 as they do such enormous strata over a large part of the 
 earth's surface, they have an importance greatly exceeding 
 that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field. 
 Moreover, these species have a peculiar interest, as the only 
 specific types of that early age which have survived to the 
 present day. While the specific features of all higher ani- 
 mals have been again and again changed since that period, 
 these humble creatures have preserved the characters they 
 then possessed shall we say, through a continuing unifor- 
 mity in the conditions under which they have lived, while all 
 other animals have been exposed to circumstances productive 
 of change ? 
 
 All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabi- 
 
72 CRETACEOUS ERA. 
 
 tants of the sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the 
 cretaceous formation zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crus- 
 tacea (in great variety of species), and fishes in smaller 
 variety. Down to this period, the placoid and ganoid fishes 
 had, as far as we have evidence, flourished alone ; now they 
 decline, and we begin to find in their place fishes of two 
 orders of superior organization, those which predominate in 
 the present creation. These are osseous in internal structure, 
 with corneous scales. The enaliosaurians disappear in this 
 formation, while the land reptiles, so numerous in the two 
 preceding periods, become much diminished in numbers. Of 
 the latter, one of the most remarkable was the mosaesaurus, 
 which seems to have held an intermediate place between the 
 monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-five feet 
 long, with a tail calculated to assist it powerfully in swim- 
 ming. 
 
 Fuci abounded in the cretaceous seas, and confervas are 
 found enclosed in flints. Of terrestrial vegetation, as of ter- 
 restrial" animals, the specimens in the European area are com- 
 paratively rare, rendering it probable that there was little dry 
 land near. The remains are chiefly of ferns, conifers, and 
 cycadese, but in the two former cases we have only cones and 
 leaves. There have been discovered many pieces of wood 
 containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus showing that 
 they had been long drifted about in the ocean before being 
 entombed at the bottom. 
 
 The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the 
 Ferruginous Sand formation, presents fossils generally iden- 
 tical with those of Europe, not excepting the fragments of 
 drilled wood ; showing that, in this, as in earlier ages, there 
 was a parity of conditions for animal life over a vast tract of 
 the earth's surface. To European reptiles, the American 
 formation adds a gigantic one, styled the Saurodon, from the 
 lizard-like character of its teeth. 
 
 We have seen that footsteps of birds have been announced 
 from America, in the new red sandstone. Some similar 
 isolated phenomena occur in the subsequent formations. In 
 
CRETACEOUS ERA. 73 
 
 the slate of Glaris, in Switzerland, corresponding to the Eng- 
 lish gait, in the chalk formation, the remains of a bird have 
 been found. From a chalk bed, near Maidstone, have like- 
 wise been extracted some remains of a bird, supposed to have 
 been of the long- winged swimmer family, and equal in size to 
 the albatross. 
 
74 
 
 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION- 
 MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 
 
 THE chalk-beds are the highest which extend over a consi- 
 derable space; but in hollows of these beds, comparatively 
 limited in extent, there have been formed series of strata 
 clays, limestones, marls, alternating to which the name of 
 the Tertiary Formation has been applied. London and Paris 
 alike rest on basins of this formation, and another such basin 
 extends from near Winchester, under Southampton, and re- 
 appears in the Isle of Wight. A stripe of it extends along 
 the east coast of North America, from Massachusetts to 
 Florida. It is also found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly 
 blended with formations still in progress. Though compara- 
 tively a local formation, it is not of the less importance as a 
 record of the condition of the earth during a certain period. 
 
 The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be consi- 
 dered as the beds of estuaries and gulfs, left at the conclusion 
 of the cretaceous period. We have seen that an estuary, 
 either by the drifting up of its mouth, or a change of level in 
 that quarter, may be supposed to have become an inland sheet 
 of water, and that, by another change of the reverse kind, it 
 may be supposed to have become an estuary again. Such 
 changes the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener 
 than once, for, first, we have there a fresh- water formation of 
 clay and limestone beds ; then, a marine-limestone formation ; 
 
MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 75 
 
 next, a second fresh- water formation, in which the material 
 of the celebrated plaster of Paris (gypsum) is included ; then 
 a second marine formation of sandy and limy beds ; and 
 finally, a third series of fresh-water strata. Such alternations 
 occur in other examples of the tertiary formation likewise. 
 
 The end of the Secondary Formation, which we have just 
 seen take place, presents in some respects a remarkable re- 
 semblance to the close of what is called the Palaeozoic period 
 in the Permian strata. Looking broadly at the specific forms 
 of the next higher strata, they appear to have undergone a 
 total change. Again do we now witness a difference of the 
 shelly cephalopoda. There is also a gradual reduction and 
 finally a disappearance of the specific forms of gasteropods, 
 formerly abundant. It has heretofore been a belief of geolo- 
 gists, that at this point, as at the former, there was an entire 
 renewal of life upon our planet ; but several considerations 
 forbid such a conclusion in the second as well as in the first 
 instance. First, the specific forms are not wholly changed, 
 for a few do pass into the next higher strata. Second, 
 there is, in the higher formation, an apparent following of 
 an order applicable to the whole palaontological history, 
 as something under one law, seeing that birds and mam- 
 malia, the next classes in the vertebrate scale, are then 
 added. In the words of Sir R. Murchison, who believes that 
 a true geological passage may be found between the two for- 
 mations, the upper secondary rocks judging from many of 
 their generic forms " seem to have prepared the way for the 
 sequence of the tertiary strata." For these reasons, the idea 
 of an entire renovation of life at this time what is commonly 
 called a new creation is not now maintained anywhere with 
 confidence. The more rational explanation of the appearances 
 is one suggested by actual facts observed in the strata ; that 
 the final cretaceous beds were deposited in seas more than 
 usually deep, and which were therefore no proper habitat for 
 the animals previously existing ; that an interval of time 
 afterwards took place, which is not represented by any strata 
 which have been discovered ; and that, by the time the ter- 
 tiary formation commenced, the usual modifying influences 
 
76 
 
 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. 
 
 having never ceased, the fauna had undergone such an amount 
 of change as naturalists are accustomed to describe (their 
 language being wholly arbitrary) as a renewal of species. 
 
 It is in perfect harmony with this view, that from the com- 
 mencement of the Tertiaries, and as we ascend in the series, we 
 find more and more specific forms identical with those still 
 existing upon earth, as if we had now reached the dawn of 
 the present state of the zoology of our planet. By the study 
 of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has formed a division of the 
 whole term into four sub-periods, to which he has given 
 names with reference to the proportions which they respec- 
 tively present of surviving species first, eocene; second, 
 miocene ; third, older pliocene ; fourth, newer pliocene. ( 40 ) 
 This division, however, is to be regarded as not safely appli- 
 cable to the Tertiaries generally, except as a convenient 
 means of indicating various portions of the series. 
 
 The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 
 1238 species of shells, of which forty-two, or 3*5 per cent, 
 yet flourish unchanged. Some of these are remarkable 
 enough ; but they all sink into insignificance beside the mam- 
 malian remains which the lower eocene deposits of the Paris 
 basin present to us, showing that the land had now become 
 the theatre of an extensive creation of the highest class of 
 animals. Cuvier ascertained about fifty species of these, all 
 of them long since extinct. About four-fifths are of the 
 order Pachydermata, thick-skinned animals, to which our 
 modern elephant, rhinoceros, horse, and pig belong. Nearly 
 the whole of these, however, belong to a family which is 
 now confined to South America and Sumatra, namely, the 
 tapirs, an animal of squat figure, and possessing a short pro- 
 boscis, an inhabitant of the woods, and. an herbivore, but of 
 unsocial habits. It is curious to find that a family now so 
 limited in its range, had formerly been distributed over 
 France, England, and other parts of the earth. Naturalists 
 have conferred the names, Palaeotherium, Lophiodon, Cory- 
 phodon, &c., upon the ancient extinct tapirs, which seem 
 chiefly to differ from modern species in a few peculiarities of 
 the constitution of the teeth, and in having three, instead of 
 
MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 77 
 
 four toes upon the fore feet. One British specimen seems to 
 have been about a third larger than the modern animal. 
 
 Another section of the Paris eocene remains have served to 
 reconstruct a family to which the general name Anoplo- 
 therium has been given, from a regard to its deficiency of all 
 offensive or defensive weapons. These are the first examples 
 of bi-hooved animals as yet discovered upon earth ; they were 
 strictly herbivorous, and make a slight approach to the 
 cervine or deer tribes. The common anoplothere was about 
 the size of an ass, but less elevated from the ground, and with 
 a tail of above three feet in length ; it is supposed to have 
 been of aquatic habits, and an expert swimmer and diver, 
 but also given to browsing upon land. Associated with these 
 we find the first example (choeropotamus) of an animal ap- 
 proaching to the hog tribe, being nearest to the peccary of 
 South America. 
 
 We learn from the remainder of the Paris fossils, and from 
 others found in the eocene, that the earth now possessed fresh- 
 water reptiles ; serpents of the size of the boa ; natatorial, 
 wading, and rapacious birds ; rodents (dormouse and 
 squirrel) ; species allied to the racoon, the genet, and fox ; 
 also bats and monkeys. Lastly, the oldest tertiaries of 
 America present us with the Zeuglodon, a herbivorous whale 
 resembling the dugong, having a stinted development of the 
 extremities, but an enormous tail, and reaching altogether 
 the length of a hundred feet. 
 
 In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per 
 cent, of existing species, showing a considerable advance 
 from the preceding era with regard to the inhabitants of the 
 sea. The advance in land animals is less marked, but yet 
 considerable. The predominating forms are still pachyderms, 
 and the tapiroid animals continue to be conspicuous. Here 
 occur remains of the Dinotherium, a creature said to exhibit 
 an affinity to the cetacea in the form of its head, and to the 
 tapir in the character of its teeth. It is most distinguished 
 by its huge size, being not less than eighteen feet long ; it had a 
 mole-like form of the shoulder-blade, conferring the power 
 of digging for food, and a couple of tusks turning down from 
 
78 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. 
 
 the lower jaw, by which it could have attached itself, like the 
 walrus, to a shore or bank, while its body floated in the 
 water. Dr. Buckland considers this and some similar 
 miocene animals, as adapted to a semi-aquatic life, in a region 
 where lakes abounded. Besides the tapirs, we have in this 
 era animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the dog, the horse, 
 the hog, and lastly, several felinse (creatures of which the 
 lion is the type) ; all of which are new forms, as far as we 
 know. There was also an abundance of marine mammalia, 
 seals, dolphins, lamantins, walruses, and whales. 
 
 The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-five to fifty ; 
 those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent, of ex- 
 isting species. The pachydermata of the preceding era now dis- 
 appear; but others enter upon the scene elephantoid animals, 
 the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and horse. All of these bear a 
 striking resemblance to pachyderms of the same families still 
 existing. We have, in the mastodon and mammoth, which 
 succeed each other in the strata, elephants variously distin- 
 guished from the present by peculiarities in their dentition, 
 and hence considered as of different species, though this is a 
 purely arbitrary distinction. What is remarkable of these 
 ancient animals is their having lived in countries so far 
 beyond the present range of their family, namely, throughout 
 the whole temperate region of Asia and Europe, (England 
 not being excepted,) and even so far north as the seventieth 
 degree of latitude. The mammoth also inhabited North 
 America. Its chief external peculiarity was a pair of long 
 curved tusks extending forwards and upwards from the upper 
 jaw. The numerous remains of the animal in the most super- 
 ficial strata, and the discovery (in 1801) of a specimen with 
 its flesh and hide entire in a mass of ice at the mouth of the 
 Lena in Siberia, show that it must have lived down to compa- 
 ratively modern times. 
 
 The pliocene gives many other new families. From 
 remains which have been found, however fragmentary in many 
 cases, there cannot be a doubt that all the principal mamma- 
 lian forms, except the highest and a few others, now existed 
 throughout the earth, and in species which only differed from 
 
MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 79 
 
 those now living in slight peculiarities, chiefly of dentition. 
 Bears, badgers, hyaenas, and feline animals ; moles and other 
 insectivores ; otters and weasels ; the wolf and dog, then 
 roamed for prey as now ; besides an extinct felina, the 
 machairodus, possessing teeth like curved saws. England 
 had beavers and bears, little different from living species; 
 only, one of the former family was of huge bulk. We also 
 had the hippopotamus and rhinoceros. Oxen, deer, camels, 
 etc., inhabited the great zoological province with which we 
 are connected ; and monkeys and apes passed far beyond the 
 tropical regions to which they are now confined. In India, 
 besides the pachyderms of the European eocene, there were 
 ruminants in abundance (including an extraordinary one, of 
 huge bulk, named the Sivatherium), carnivores, rodents, and 
 insectivores. Here also were monkeys, of unusual bulk ; but 
 the most wonderful animal as yet discovered in this region 
 was a tortoise, not distinguishable in any point of structure 
 from a land species now living, but reaching the surprising 
 length of eighteen feet. The discoveries among the tertiaries 
 of South America have been of a not less interesting cha- 
 racter, in as far as they equally show an approach to the 
 existing zoological characters of that region. Dr. Lund, a 
 Danish naturalist, presents us with a monkey, indicating the 
 features of the platyrrhine or New World group ; and the 
 edentate order, which is still more peculiar to that region, is 
 there preceded by examples of vast size. In the megatherium, 
 megalonyx, scelidotherium, and mylodon, we have a family of 
 sloths, of elephantine magnitude, which lived by breaking 
 down and eating trees. The toxodon surprises us not less, 
 being an equally huge member of the rodent order, that 
 order which now includes most of the smallest quadrupeds. ( 41 ) 
 One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary 
 formation remains to be noticed, the prevalence of volcanic 
 action at that era. In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, 
 and in the vicinity of Rome and Xaples, lavas exactly re- 
 sembling the produce of existing volcanoes are associated 
 and intermixed with the lacustrine as well as marine tertiaries. 
 The superficies of tertiaries in England is disturbed by two 
 
80 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. 
 
 great swells, forming what are called anticlinal axes, one of 
 which divides the London from the Hampshire basin, while 
 the other passes through the Isle of Wight, both throwing 
 the strata down at a violent inclination towards the north, as 
 if the subterranean disturbing force had waved forward in 
 that direction. The Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have both un- 
 dergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and in 
 Sicily there are mountains which have risen three thousand 
 feet since the deposition of some of the most recent of these 
 rocks. The general effect of these operations was of course 
 to extend the land surface, and to increase the variety of its 
 features, thus improving the natural drainage, and generally 
 adapting the earth for the reception of higher classes of 
 animals. 
 
81 
 
 ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS 
 
 EXISTING SPECIFIC FORMS ABUNDANT. 
 
 WE have now completed our survey of the series of stratified 
 rocks, and traced in their fossils the progress of organic crea- 
 tion down to a time which seems not long antecedent to the 
 appearance of man. There are, nevertheless, memorials of still 
 another era or space of time which it is all but certain did 
 also precede that event. 
 
 The first that calls for notice is the phenomenon to which 
 geologists have applied the term denudation. Great hitches 
 and slips are detected in superficial strata, such as, if left in 
 their original state, must have caused considerable inequalities 
 on the face of the country ; yet all is found as smooth the 
 joinings are all as much reduced to a common level as if 
 some gigantic artificial force had been used for the purpose. 
 Again, a great valley has been scooped out in the midst of 
 sedimentary strata, leaving the edges of these facing each 
 other from the opposite sides, with perhaps here and there an 
 isolated mass starting up to the height of the two sides, being 
 composed of matter which has resisted the agency by which 
 the adjoining matter was removed. Here, it is thought, we 
 see incontestable traces of the operation of moving water. 
 The second fact we are called to notice is, that over the rock 
 formations of all eras, in various parts of the globe, but con- 
 fined in general to situations not very elevated, there is a 
 layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with 
 fragments of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, 
 and to which geologists give the name of Diluvium, as being 
 
82 ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS. 
 
 apparently the produce of some vast flood, or of the sea 
 thrown into an unusual agitation. It seems to indicate that, 
 at the time when it was laid down, much of the present dry 
 land was under the ocean a supposition which we shall see 
 supported by other evidence. The included masses of rock 
 have been carefully inspected in many places, and traced to 
 particular parent beds at considerable distances. Connected 
 with these phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes 
 of hills and elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, 
 such as we might suppose would be produced by a quantity 
 of loose blocks hurried along over them by a flood. Another 
 associated phenomenon is that called crag and tail, which 
 exists in many places, namely, a rocky mountain, or lesser 
 elevation, presenting on one side the naked rock in a more or 
 less abrupt form, and on the other a gentle slope ; the sites of 
 Windsor, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respective 
 castles, are specimens of crag and tail. Finally, I may 
 advert to certain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest 
 the attention of travellers on the surface of Sweden and 
 Finland, and which are also found in the United States, 
 where, indeed, the whole of these phenomena have been 
 observed over a large surface, as well as in Europe. It is 
 very remarkable that the direction from which the diluvial 
 blocks have generally come, the lines of the grooved rock 
 surfaces, the direction of the crag and tail eminences, and 
 that of the clay and gravel ridges phenomena, be it ob- 
 served, extending over the northern parts of both Europe and 
 America are all from the north and north-west towards the 
 south-east. We thus acquire the idea of a powerful current 
 moving in a direction from north-west to south-east, carrying, 
 besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solid surfaces 
 as they passed along, abrading the north-west faces of many 
 hills, but leaving the slopes in the opposite direction unin- 
 jured, and in some instances forming long ridges of detritus 
 along the surface. These are curious considerations ; and it 
 has become a question of much interest, by what means, and 
 under what circumstances, such a current was produced. 
 But in the present state of our knowledge, all that can be 
 
EXISTING SPECIFIC FORMS ABUNDANT. 83 
 
 legitimately inferred from the diluvium is, that many portions 
 of the northern nations of Europe and America were then 
 under the sea, and that a strong current set over them. 
 
 Connected with the Diluvium is the history of Ossiferous 
 Cavprns, of which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in 
 Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in Franconia, and other places. 
 They occur in the calcareous strata, as the great caverns 
 generally do, but have in all instances been naturally closed 
 up till the recent period of their discovery. The floors are 
 covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, 
 over which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the drop- 
 pings from the roof since the time when the clay bed was 
 laid down. In the instances above specified, and several 
 others, there have been found, under the clay bed, assem- 
 blages of the bones of animals, of many various kinds. At 
 Kirkdale, for example, the remains of twenty-four species 
 were ascertained namely, pigeon, lark, raven, duck, and par- 
 tridge ; mouse, water-rat, rabbit, hare, hippopotamus, rhino- 
 ceros, elephant, weasel, fox, wolf, deer (three species), ox, 
 horse, bear, tiger, hyena. From many of the bones of the 
 gentler of these animals being found in a broken state, it is 
 supposed that the cave was a haunt of hyenas and other pre- 
 daceous creatures, by which the smaller ones were here con- 
 sumed. This must have been at a time antecedent to the 
 floodings which produced the diluvium, since the bones are 
 covered by a bed of that formation. It is impossible not to 
 see here a very natural series of incidents. First, the cave is 
 frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind of charnel- 
 house. Then, submerged in the current which has been 
 spoken of, it receives a clay flooring from the waters contain- 
 ing that matter in suspension. Finally, raised from the 
 water, but with no mouth to the open air, it remains unin- 
 truded on for a long series of ages, during which the clay 
 flooring receives a new calcareous covering, from the drop- 
 pings of the roof. 
 
 Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or 
 boulders, which in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn 
 over the surface, particularly in the north of Europe. Some 
 
 G2 
 
84 ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS. 
 
 of these blocks are many tons in weight, yet are clearly as- 
 certained to have belonged originally to situations at a great 
 distance. Fragments, for example, of the granite of Shap 
 Fell are found in every direction around to the distance of 
 fifty miles, one piece being placed high upon Criffel Moun- 
 tain, on the opposite side of the Solway estuary ; so also are 
 fragments of the Alps found far up the slopes of the Jura. 
 There are even blocks on the east coast of England, supposed 
 to have travelled from Norway. The only rational conjec- 
 ture which can be formed as to the transport of such masses 
 from so great a distance, is one which presumes them to have 
 been carried and dropped by icebergs, while seas existed upon 
 the space between their original and final sites. Icebergs do 
 even now carry off such masses from the polar coasts, 
 which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must take up 
 situations at the bottom of the sea, similar to those in which 
 we find the erratic blocks of the present dry land. 
 
 While the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose a 
 part at least of the present land to have at one time been sunk 
 to a considerable depth in the sea, there is another set of ap- 
 pearances which as manifestly show the steps by which the 
 land was made afterwards to re-emerge from that element. 
 These consist of terraces, which have been detected near, and 
 at some distance inland from, the coast lines of Scandinavia, 
 Britain, America, and other regions ; being evidently ancient 
 beaches, or platforms, on which the margin of the sea at one 
 time rested. They have been observed at different heights 
 above the present sea-level, from twenty to above twelve 
 hundred feet ; and in many places they are seen rising above 
 each other in succession, to the number of three, four, and 
 even more. The smooth flatness of these terraces, with ge- 
 nerally a slight inclination towards the sea, the sandy compo- 
 sition of many of them, and, in some instances, the preser- 
 vation of marine shells in the ground, identify them perfectly 
 with existing sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and 
 scoopings which have at frequent intervals been effected in 
 them by water-courses. The irresistible inference from the 
 phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast line ; then 
 
EXISTING SPECIFIC FORMS ABUNDANT. 85 
 
 an elevation took place, and the second highest became so, the 
 first being now raised into the air and thrown inland. Then, 
 upon another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new 
 point of contact with the land, the third highest beach, and so 
 on down to the platform nearest to the present sea- beach. 
 Phenomena of this kind become comparatively familiar to us, 
 when we hear of evidence that the last sixty feet of the eleva- 
 tion of Sweden, and the last eighty-five of that of Chili, have 
 taken place since man first dwelt in those countries ; nay, 
 that the elevation of the former country goes on at this time 
 at the rate of about forty-five inches in a century, and that 
 a thousand miles of the Chilian coast rose four feet in one 
 night, under the influence of a powerful earthquake, so lately 
 as 1822. Subterranean forces, of the kind then exemplified 
 in Chili, supply a ready explanation of the whole phenomena, 
 though some other operating causes have been suggested. 
 In an inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to 
 learn some particulars respecting the levels. Taking a parti- 
 cular beach, it is generally observed that the level continues 
 the same along a considerable number of miles, and nothing 
 like breaks or hitches has as yet been detected in any case. 
 A second and a third beach are also observed to be exactly 
 parallel to the first. These facts would seem to indicate quiet 
 elevating movements, uniform over a large tract. It must, 
 however, be remarked that the raised beaches at one part of 
 a coast rarely coincide with those at another part forty or fifty 
 miles off. We might suppose this to indicate a limit in that 
 extent of the uniformity of the elevating cause ; but it would 
 be rash to conclude positively that such is the case. In the 
 present sea, as is well known, there are different levels at 
 different places, owing to the operation of peculiar local 
 causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx of large rivers 
 into narrow-mouthed estuaries. The differences of level in 
 the ancient beaches might be occasioned by some such causes. 
 But, whatever doubt may rest on this minor point, enough 
 has been ascertained to settle the main one, that we have in 
 these platforms indubitable monuments of an elevation of the 
 
86 ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS. 
 
 land from the sea, and the concluding great event of the geo- 
 logical history. 
 
 The idea of such a deep immersion of the land unavoidably 
 suggests some considerations as to the effect which it might 
 have upon terrestrial animal life. Some, regarding it as a 
 complete submersion, argue that terrestrial life would be, oh 
 such an occasion, extensively, if not universally, destroyed. 
 Nor was the idea of its universal destruction the less plau- 
 sible, when it was believed that the present land animals are 
 an entirely new set of species, introduced since the conclusion 
 of the Tertiary Formation. It must now be owned that there 
 are insurmountable objections to such hypothesis. First, it 
 is not true that the specific forms of the tertiary epoch have 
 all of them disappeared. There are several for example, a 
 badger of the Miocene which are not in the slightest degree 
 distinguished from living species. Many reptiles, now living 
 in India, have been proved to be coeval with the Himalayan 
 Anoplothere, Mastodon, and Hippopotamus. Second, the 
 specific distinctions alleged in a great number of cases be- 
 tween tertiary and existing animals are extremely slight, and 
 such as we have no fixed principle by which to be assured 
 that they mark new species, in the sense of a new creation. 
 Finally, the tertiary animals of America indicate an approxi- 
 mation to the character of existing animals in that region, 
 and tertiary animals of the other great continent, equally ap- 
 proximate to those at present occupying it ; showing that the 
 demarcations of the present great zoological provinces had 
 been already marked out, and have never been obliterated. 
 There is therefore enough to justify us in believing that no 
 entire submergence of the earth took place at the time of the 
 Diluvium, though how nearly it might approach completeness 
 we cannot say. 
 
 There are some other superficial formations, of less conse- 
 quence on the present occasion than the diluvium namely, 
 lacustrine deposits, or filled-up lakes ; alluvium, or the de- 
 posits of rivers beside their margins ; deltas, the deposits 
 made by great ones at their efflux into the sea ; peat mosses ; 
 
EXISTING SPECIFIC FORMS ABUNDANT. 87 
 
 and the vegetable soil. The animal remains found in these 
 generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that now pre- 
 vailing, or melting into it, there being included many 
 species which still exist. In a lacustrine deposit at Market- 
 Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones 
 of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, 
 birds, all or nearly all presenting peculiarities different from 
 existing species, associated with thirteen species of land and 
 fresh- water shells, " exactly identical with types now living 
 in the vicinity." In similar deposits in North America, are 
 remains of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other 
 animals of extinct and living types. In short, these superfi- 
 cial deposits show precisely such remains as might be ex- 
 pected from a time at which the present forms of the animal 
 world had been generally assumed, but yet so far remote in 
 chronology as to allow of the dropping of many species, 
 through familiar causes perhaps we should only say the 
 obliteration of many peculiarities called specific in the in- 
 terval. Still, however, several of the most important living 
 species have left no record of themselves in any formation 
 beyond what are, comparatively speaking, modern. Such 
 are the sheep and goat, and such, above all, is our own 
 species. We thus learn that, compared with many humbler 
 animals, man is a being, as it were, of yesterday. 
 
88 
 
 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 RESPECTING 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 
 
 THUS concludes the wondrous section of the earth's history 
 which is told by geology. It takes up our globe at the 
 period when its original incandescent state had nearly ceased ; 
 conducts it through what we have every reason to believe 
 were vast spaces of time, in the course of which many super- 
 ficial changes took place, and vegetable and animal life was 
 gradually evolved ; and drops it just at the point when man 
 was apparently about to enter on the scene. The compilation 
 of such a history, from materials of so extraordinary a cha- 
 racter, and the powerful nature of the evidence which these 
 materials afford, are calculated to excite our admiration, and 
 the result must be allowed to exalt the dignity of science, as 
 a product of man's industry and his reason. 
 
 It is now to be remarked, that the whole series of opera- 
 tions displayed in inorganic geology is concluded upon as 
 having taken place under the agency of natural laws. Those 
 movements of subterranean force which thrust up mountain 
 ranges and upheaved continents, stand in inextricable connec- 
 tion, on the one hand, with the volcanoes which are yet belch- 
 ing forth lavas and shaking large tracts of ground, as, on the 
 other, with the primitive incandescent state of the earth. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 89 
 
 Those forces which disintegrated the early rocks and of the 
 detritus formed new beds at the bottoms of seas, are still 
 seen at work to the same effect in every part of the globe. 
 To bring these truths the more clearly before us, it is possible 
 to make a substance resembling basalt in a furnace ; lime- 
 stone and sandstone have both been formed from suitable 
 materials in appropriate receptacles ; the phenomena of 
 cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been similated 
 on a small scale, and by the same agent crystals are 
 formed. In short, the remark which was made regard- 
 ing the indifference of the cosmical laws to the scale on 
 which they operated, is to be repeated regarding the geo- 
 logical. A common furnace will sometimes exemplify the 
 operation of laws which have been concerned in the produc- 
 tion of a Giant's Causeway ; and in a sloping ploughed field 
 after rain, we may often observe, at the lower end of a furrow, 
 a handful of washed and neatly deposited mud or sand, capable 
 of serving as an illustration of the way in which Nature 
 has produced the deltas of the Nile and Ganges. In the 
 ripple-mark on sandy beaches of the present day, we see 
 Nature's exact repetition of the operations by which she im- 
 pressed similar features on the sandstones of the carboni- 
 genous era. Even such marks as wind-slanted rain would in 
 our day produce on tide-deserted sands, have been read upon 
 tablets of the ancient strata. It is the same Nature working 
 every where and in all time, causing the wind to blow and 
 the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow, inconceivable 
 ages before the birth of our race, as now. So also we learn 
 from the conifers of those old ages, that there were winter 
 and summer upon earth, before any of us lived to liken the 
 one to all that is genial in our own nature, or to say that the 
 other breathed no airs so unkind as man's ingratitude. Let 
 no one suppose there is any necessary disrespect for the 
 Creator in thus tracing his laws in their minute and familiar 
 operations. There is in reality no true great and small, 
 grand and familiar, in nature. Such only appear, when we 
 thrust ourselves in as a point from which to start in judging. 
 Let us pass, if possible, beyond immediate impressions, and 
 
90 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE 
 
 see all in relation to Cause, and we shall chastenedly admit 
 that the whole is alike worshipful. 
 
 We have, then, in this history, a planet formed, and a long 
 and complicated series of superficial changes effected upon it, 
 all through the efficacy of simply natural laws, which we can 
 see at work at this day in numberless familiar ways. But 
 mixed up with these geognostic changes, and apparently as 
 a final object connected with the formation of the globe itself, 
 there is another set of phenomena presented in the course of 
 our history the coming into existence, namely, of a long 
 suite of living things, vegetable and animal, terminating in 
 the families which we still see occupying the surface. The 
 question arises In what manner has this set of phenomena 
 originated ? Can we touch at and rest for a moment on the 
 possibility of plants and animals having likewise been pro- 
 duced in the way of natural law ; thus assigning but one 
 class of causes for everything revealed to our sensual obser- 
 vation ; or are we at once to reject this idea, and remain con- 
 tent, either to suppose that creative power here acted in a 
 different way, or to believe unexaminingly that the inquiry is 
 one beyond our powers ? 
 
 Taking the last part of the question first, I would reply, that 
 I am extremely loath to imagine that there is anything in 
 nature which we should, for any reason, refrain from exa- 
 mining. If we can infer aught from the past history of 
 science, it is, that the whole of nature is a legitimate field for 
 the exercise of our intellectual faculties ; that there is a con- 
 nexion between this knowledge and our well-being ; and that 
 if we can judge from things once despaired of by our inquiring 
 reason, but now made clear and simple, there is none of 
 Nature's mysteries which we may not hopefully attempt to 
 penetrate. To remain idly content to presume a various class 
 of immediate causes for organic nature, seems to me, on this 
 ground, equally objectionable. 
 
 Granting, then, that the inquiry should be entered upon, it 
 may be right to insist, in the first place, upon certain general 
 considerations, which, supposing we enter upon it in a scientific 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 91 
 
 spirit, appear to throw the balance of likelihood on the side of 
 ordinary natural causes. The production of the organic world 
 is, we see, mixed up with the production of the physical. It 
 is mixed in the sense of actual connexion and dependence, and 
 it is mixed in regard to time, for the one class of phenomena 
 commenced whenever the other had arrived at a point which 
 favoured or admitted of it ; life, as it were, pressed in when- 
 ever and wherever there were suitable conditions, and, once it 
 had commenced, the two classes of phenomena went on, hand 
 in hand, together. It is surely very unlikely, d. priori, that 
 in such a complex mass of phenomena there should have been 
 two totally distinct modes of the exercise of the divine power. 
 Were such the case, it would form a most extraordinary, and 
 to philosophic consideration ought to be a most startling ex- 
 ception, from what we otherwise observe of the character of 
 the divine procedure in the universe. Further, let us con- 
 sider the comparative character of the two classes of phenomena, 
 for comparison may of course be legitimate where the natural 
 system is not admitted. The absurdities into which we should 
 thus be led must strike every reflecting mind. The Eternal 
 Sovereign arranges a solar or an astral system by dispositions 
 imparted primordially to matter; he causes, by the same 
 majestic means, vast oceans to form and continents to rise, 
 and all the grand meteoric agencies to proceed in ceaseless 
 alternation, so as to fit the earth for a residence of organic 
 beings. But when, in the course of these operations, fuci and 
 corals are to be for the first time placed in those oceans, a par- 
 ticular interference of the divine power is required : in the 
 belief of the ignorant, the very hand of Deity is necessary ; in 
 that of the sage as sages are amongst us only a " creative 
 fiat" is demanded ; but, in either way, special attention to the 
 object, such as a human being has to pay in the progress of 
 his affairs, is presumed. And not only on this one occasion, 
 but all along the stretch of geological time, this special atten- 
 tion is needed whenever a new family of organisms is to be 
 introduced : a new fiat for fishes, another for reptiles, a third 
 for birds ; nay, taking up the present views of geologists as to 
 species, such an event as the commencement of a certain 
 
92 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE 
 
 cephalopod, one with a few new nodulosities and corrugations 
 upon its shell, would, on this theory, require the particular 
 care of that same Almighty who willed at once the whole 
 means by which infinity was replenished with its worlds ! 
 
 I have here contemplated the question as one remaining to 
 be settled by science. We must not, however, overlook that 
 the decision is exposed to great prejudice, in consequence of 
 our minds being prepossessed by a more or less distinct con- 
 clusion in favour of organic creation by some kind of special 
 exercise of divine power. This is the idea which first rose in 
 the human family, being that which the unassisted mind is 
 apt to form out of the appearances presented to it ; precisely 
 as, with regard to the heavenly motions, the geocentric theory 
 was that which the appearances first suggested, and therefore 
 was first embraced by man. This idea of the organic creation 
 has rested almost undisturbed to the present day, because, till 
 a recent period, science came little near it, and means for 
 testing its soundness scarcely existed. It is different now, 
 when, besides the cosmical arrangements being seen to have 
 been brought about under natural law, the same influence is 
 traced through the whole series of geognostic changes since 
 the beginning of our planet's existence. But yet, this know- 
 ledge being recent, the ancient idea of the creation of organisms 
 continues to have that hold upon our minds which early im- 
 pressions and long-continued habits tend to give to even the 
 most unphilosophical convictions. It is necessary to keep this 
 in view, if we would enter upon the inquiry in a philosophical 
 spirit, and with the pure desire to arrive only at such a con- 
 clusion as the balance of evidence may justify. 
 
 In intimate connexion with the ancient idea, is the supposi- 
 tion found resting in many minds, that to presume a creation 
 of living beings by the intervention of law, is equivalent to 
 superseding the whole doctrine of the divine authorship of 
 organic nature. Were this true, it would form a most im- 
 portant objection to the law theory ; but I think it is not only 
 not true, but the reverse of the truth. As formerly stated, 
 the whole idea of law relates only to the mode in which the 
 Deity is pleased to manifest his power in the natural world. 
 
ORIGIN OP THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 93 
 
 It leaves the absolute fact of his authorship of and supremacy 
 over nature, precisely where it was ; and only tells us that, 
 instead of dealing with the natural world as a human being 
 traffics with his own affairs, adjusting each circumstance to a 
 relation with other circumstances as they emerge, he has 
 originally conceived, and since sustained arrangements fitted 
 to serve in a general sufficiency for all contingencies ; himself, 
 of course, necessarily living in all such arrangements, as the 
 only means by which they could be, even for a moment, 
 upheld. Were the question to be settled upon a consideration 
 of the respective moral merits of the two theories, I would 
 say that the latter is greatly the preferable, as it implies a far 
 grander view of the divine power and dignity than the other. 
 For one thing, it places the leading divine attribute of fore- 
 sight in a much more sublime position. " If," says Dr. 
 Buckland, contemplating the possible establishment of this 
 doctrine " if the properties adopted by the elements at the 
 moment of their creation adapted them beforehand to the 
 infinity of complicated useful purposes which they have 
 already answered, and may have still further to answer, under 
 many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal 
 constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, 
 would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and 
 power that could comprehend such an infinity of future uses 
 under future systems, in the original groundwork of his crea- 
 tion'' 
 
 It is also to be observed, though almost needlessly, that any 
 objection of this kind would lie equally well against other 
 doctrines which the enlightened part of mankind have long 
 admitted. The whole purport of science is to ascertain law ; 
 it has, in the course of time, transferred one set of phenomena 
 after another out of the region of marvel into that of law, thus 
 showing a true divine regulation in them. Suppose, then, 
 that there be a balance of probability from actual evidence in 
 favour of an organic creation by law, we should only, in so 
 settling the matter, be concluding upon one department of 
 the great system of things, as we have been concluding upon 
 others throughout all the ages of philosophy. 
 
94 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE 
 
 To return to a consideration of the positive arguments for 
 an organic creation by law, we have seen that this stands in 
 harmony with our conclusions as to the cosmical arrangements, 
 and also those regarding the geognostic changes. We are 
 now to observe that it consorts equally well with what we 
 know of the actual history of organic beings upon the earth. 
 These came not at once, as they might have been expected to 
 do if produced by some special act, or even some special inter- 
 position of will, on the part of the Deity. They came in a 
 long-extending succession, in the order, as we shall afterwards 
 see more convincingly, of progressive organization; grade 
 following grade, till, from a humble starting-point in both 
 kingdoms, the highest forms were realized. Time, we see, 
 was an element in the evolution of Being, as it is in the repro- 
 duction of an individual at the present day. At the beginning 
 of geological investigation, it was thought that some imme- 
 diate external conditions ruled the appearance of particular 
 classes of animals at particular times : as that the absence of 
 dry land was the cause of the late commencement of terrestrial 
 animals; that there being for a long time only reptilian land 
 vertebrata was owing to an overcharge of the atmosphere with 
 carbonic acid the store from which came the chief material 
 of the abundant vegetation of the carbonigenous age ; and so 
 forth. But it is now seen that the progress of the animal 
 world was, in its main features, independent of such circum- 
 stances. There was dry land unreckonable ages before there 
 were any land animals. The sea abounded in invertebrate 
 animals before there were any fish, though the conditions 
 required for the existence of both are the same. The oolitic 
 continents where only reptiles roamed could have equally 
 supported mammalia, for which the atmosphere was then fully 
 fitted, even upon the admission of the carbonic acid theory, 
 as the coal was by that time formed; yet mammalia came 
 not. It was also a dream at the dawn of true geology, that 
 fresh creations of animals were connected with great physical 
 revolutions of the surface ; as if, at particular times, all had 
 perished in storms of volcanic violence, and been replaced with 
 a wholly new fauna. But this idea is likewise passing away. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 95 
 
 It is now seen that changes in specific forms took place quietly 
 in the course of time, while no volcanic disturbances are 
 traceable. In short, it is always becoming more and more 
 clear that organic progress both the specific changes in classes 
 formerly existing, and the accession of new and higher classes 
 depended, not by any means wholly or immediately upon ex- 
 ternal circumstances, but in great part upon time. All this 
 looks very unlike either special working or special willing on 
 the part of the Creator, but, on the contrary, very like the 
 simply natural procedure of things in the world of our own day. 
 There are some other facts in the history of fossils, which 
 it is difficult to reconcile with the idea of special creative 
 effort, but which perfectly harmonize with that of a creation 
 through the medium or in the manner of law. It is admitted, 
 for instance, that " the differences which exist between extinct 
 faunas and the animals now living are so much greater in 
 proportion as these faunas are most ancient" Passing down- 
 ward in the formations and backward in time, we first find 
 species identical with the present ; next, only genera ; after- 
 wards, only families or orders. These are the words of 
 naturalists ; but the truth simply is, that in early formations, 
 animals resembled the present in broad general characters ; 
 afterwards, they resembled them in characters more parti- 
 cular ; finally, they become identical. Always as we advance, 
 the total mass of the animal creation puts on more and more 
 of the appearances which it now bears. It may be asked if 
 this does not seem to imply that the present system of things 
 is essentially connected with the past ; in which case, if the 
 present is a natural system, we have an additional proof that 
 the past was a natural system also. So also it is admitted 
 that, however nearly the specific forms may experience an 
 entire change from one formation to another, there are 
 always resemblances and approximations between each two 
 which are adjacent to each other. " If," says M. Pictet, an 
 opponent of the views here advocated, "we compare two 
 successive creations of one and the same epoch, such as the 
 faunas of the five divisions of the cretaceous formation, we 
 cannot fail to be struck with the intimate connexion they 
 
96 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE 
 
 have with each other. The greater part of the genera are the 
 same : a great part of the species are very closely allied and 
 easily confounded. [Referring to two of these sub-forma- 
 tions,] is it probable that the albian fauna had been completely 
 annihilated, and then, by a new and independent creation, 
 replaced by a fauna altogether new, and so similar to it ? I 
 am aware that these facts may be referred to the general plan 
 of creation [that is, a supposed plan, according to which the 
 divine power had operated in its special successive creative 
 operations] ; but is the mind entirely satisfied with this expla- 
 nation ?" I cannot but echo the last question. Can we be 
 content to assume for, after all, it is assumption that a 
 series of miraculous creations was invariably to be in the 
 manner of a piecing on and blending from one to another, when 
 we have the alternative of presuming (grant it were to be 
 left to presumption alone) that these connexions are only 
 memorials of a natural law presiding over the development 
 of the whole organic creation, and making it one and not 
 many things ? I can only wonder that a man learned in the 
 subject can see such a difficulty as he has here stated, and find 
 it more easily passed over than the bare fact that certain mam- 
 malia have not changed for three thousand years, for such 
 is the only difficulty he states on the other side. 
 
 It must further be recollected that we are not only to 
 account for the origination of organic being upon this little 
 planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of 
 thousands of series, the whole of which again form but one 
 portion of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where 
 all seems analogous. We have to suppose, that every one 
 of these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic 
 being, or in the way of becoming so. This is a conclusion 
 which every addition to our knowledge makes only the more 
 irresistible. Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for 
 creative intelligence, that it should be constantly paying a 
 special attention to the creation of species, as they may be 
 required in each situation throughout those worlds, at parti- 
 cular times? Is such an idea accordant with our general 
 conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 97 
 
 Great Author ? Yet such is the notion which we must form, 
 if we adhere to the doctrine of special exercise. Let us see, 
 on the other hand, how the doctrine of a creation in the manner 
 of law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world. 
 
 Unprepared as most men may be for such an announce- 
 ment, there can be no doubt that we are able, in this limited 
 sphere, to form some satisfactory conclusions as to the plants 
 and animals of those other spheres which move at such im- 
 mense distances from us. Suppose that the first persons of 
 an early nation who made a ship and ventured to sea in it, 
 observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects which they 
 had never before seen namely, a fleet of other ships would 
 they not have been justified in supposing that those ships 
 were occupied, like their own, by human beings, possessing 
 hands to row and steer, eyes to watch the signs of the 
 weather, intelligence to guide them from one place to an- 
 other in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only 
 showing such differences as they knew to be producible by 
 difference of climate and habits of life ? Precisely in this 
 manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote 
 spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in 
 one mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, 
 inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the 
 same, although probably with differences in the proportions 
 of ingredients in different globes, and also some difference of 
 conditions. Out of a certain number of the elements of inor- 
 ganic matter are composed organic bodies, both vegetable and 
 animal : such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it 
 is here. We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceous 
 and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents 
 of the organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet 
 seats of life. Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading prin- 
 ciple : therefore there must be a relation between the spheres 
 and their respective organic occupants, by virtue of which 
 they are fixed, as far as necessary, on the surface. Such a 
 relation, of course, involves details as to the density and elas- 
 ticity of structure, as well as size of the organic tenants, in 
 proportion to the gravity of the respective planets pecu- 
 
98 ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 
 
 liarities, however, which may quite well consist with the idea 
 of a universality of certain types, such as we see exemplified 
 upon earth. We come to comparatively matter of detail, 
 when we advert to heat and light ; yet it is important to con- 
 sider that these are universal agents, and that, as they bear 
 marked relations to organic life and structure on earth, they 
 may be presumed to do so in other spheres also. The con- 
 siderations as to light are particularly interesting, for, on our 
 globe, the structure of one important organ, almost univer- 
 sally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and pre- 
 cise relation to it. Where there is light there will be eyes, 
 and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as 
 the eyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as 
 may be necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of con- 
 dition and of situation. It is but a small stretch of the argu- 
 ment to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of a large por- 
 tion of our animal kingdom being thus universal, a parity in 
 all the other organs species for species, class for class, king- 
 dom for kingdom is highly likely, and that thus the inha- 
 bitants of all the other globes of space bear not only a general, 
 but a particular resemblance to those of our own. 
 
 It must be obvious, that, if organic beings are thus uni- 
 versally distributed, the idea of their having all come into 
 existence through the immediate agency of laws everywhere 
 applicable, is strictly conformable to the principle laid down 
 for our own limited sphere. As a set of laws produced all 
 orbs, their motions and geognostic arrangements, so a set of 
 laws overspread them all with life. The whole productive or 
 creative arrangements thus appear in unity. 
 
99 
 
 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 RESPECTING 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 
 
 IT being thus shown that there is a general probability in 
 favour of organic creation as a natural event, it becomes 
 necessary to inquire whether this idea be supported or con- 
 tradicted by special facts connected with the constitution of 
 organic bodies 
 
 Here the patrons of opposite views appear at first sight to 
 have an advantage. " Yes," they say, " it may appear that 
 the bodies of space have been formed and arranged in the 
 manner of natural law ; it may be admitted that all the 
 geognostic phenomena have had a similar history ; but when 
 you come to treat of life and organization, you find yourself 
 in a totally different field. These are mysteries, in the con- 
 sideration of which physical laws fail you, and you are forced 
 to make reference to causes of a different order. Before the 
 origin of life upon our planet could be supposed to have taken 
 place as a simply natural phenomenon, it would be necessary 
 to show that it can be produced at this moment out of inor- 
 ganic elements. But this cannot be shown ; and we must 
 therefore conclude that a special interference of deity was re- 
 quired at the commencement of every species." 
 
 It is nevertheless true, that much of this is mere assump- 
 
 H2 
 
100 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 tion, contrary to the actual state, and much more contrary to 
 the tendency, of science. 
 
 First, with regard to the constituents of organic bodies, it 
 is found that they are merely a selection of the simple sub- 
 stances which form the inorganic or non-vitalized world. 
 Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, are the chief. The 
 first combinations of these in animals are into what are called 
 proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, etc., out of which the 
 animal body is composed. Now, so far from there being any- 
 thing peculiar or mysterious in these combinations, it is 
 acknowledged that they are simply chemical. "It is now 
 certain," says Dr. Daubeny, of Oxford, " that the same simple 
 laws of composition pervade the whole creation ; and that if 
 the organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to 
 avoid resolving into their ultimate elements the proximate 
 principles upon which he operates, the result of his analysis 
 will show that they are combined precisely according to the 
 same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to 
 be."( 42 ) A particular fact is here worthy of attention : " The 
 conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary pro- 
 cesses of vegetable economy, is effected by the production of 
 a secretion termed diastase, which occasions both the rupture 
 of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum 
 into sugar. This diastase may be separately obtained by the 
 chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the 
 vegetable organization. He can also imitate its effects by 
 other chemical agents." ( 43 ) The same writer elsewhere adds, 
 " No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing 
 that, if we had the power of bringing together the elements 
 of any organic compound, in their requisite states and pro- 
 portions, the result would be any other than that which is 
 found in the living body. Every fresh discovery," he says, 
 " is tending to break down the barrier between the two 
 classes of organic and inorganic bodies, as far as regards their 
 chemical combination." ( 44 ) 
 
 It is much to know the elements of organic bodies, and that 
 the first combinations of these are simply chemical. The 
 powers by which these combinations take place are next to 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 101 
 
 be inquired into. The predominant idea hitherto has been, 
 that the vital affinities are of a totally distinct nature, de- 
 pending upon a mystic something, to which the term vital 
 principle was applied. But this idea is now on the decline. 
 Admitting the vital affinities, as powers superseding and 
 counteracting ordinary chemical affinities, it is seen that the 
 idea of a distinct inscrutable principle on which they depend, is 
 " both unsupported by evidence and useless in the explanation 
 of facts." ( 45 ) It is becoming evident that living structures 
 result from the action of a multitude of natural forces in 
 combination "gravity, cohesion, elasticity, the agency of 
 the imponderables, and all other powers which operate both 
 on masses and atoms." Professor Draper, of New York, in 
 making this statement, says " It is astonishing that in our 
 days the ancient system which excludes all connexion with 
 natural philosophy and chemistry, and depends on the ficti- 
 tious aid of a visionary force, should continue to exist ; a 
 system which at the outset ought to have broken down by 
 the most common considerations, such as those connected 
 with the mechanical principles involved in the bony skeleton, 
 the optical principles in the construction of the eye, or the 
 hydraulic action of the valves of the heart."( 46 ) 
 
 So much for the combinations concerned in living bodies ; 
 but how shall we hope to see their forms brought under any 
 relation to physical laws ? On this point we have some 
 illustrations in the phenomena attending the production of 
 crystals, a class of bodies which has been said to stand be- 
 tween the inorganic and the organic. From the agency which 
 has been employed by Mr. Crosse in making crystals formerly 
 supposed to be of Nature's production alone, it is now incon- 
 testable that crystallization is dependent on electric agency, 
 the special forms being the result of the peculiar nature of the 
 constituent substance and the conditions under which the 
 imponderable is applied. Here are obviously natural means 
 of producing forms almost as various as those of living beings, 
 and equally determinate and regular. A certain community 
 of cause in the two instances is indicated by the surprising 
 resemblance which some examples of crystallization bear to 
 
102 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 vegetable forms. In some, the mimicry is beautiful and com- 
 plete ; for example, in the well-known one called the Arbor 
 Diance. An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of 
 mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water equal to 
 thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece of soft 
 amalgam of silver, suspended in the solution, quickly gathers 
 to itself the particles of the silver of the amalgam, which form 
 upon it a crystallization precisely resembling a shrub. Vege- 
 table figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary 
 appearances of the electric fluid. In the marks caused by 
 positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see 
 the ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves ; 
 those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, 
 according as they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena 
 seem to indicate that the electric energies have had something 
 to do in determining the forms of plants. That they are 
 intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for 
 germination will not proceed in water charged with negative 
 electricity, while water charged positively greatly favours it ; 
 and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance when a number 
 of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its 
 beds. With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications of the 
 branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electri- 
 city, and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance 
 calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly 
 its lower strata, is generally charged positively, while the 
 earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence 
 here is curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on 
 the basis of a natural electrical operation the brush realized. 
 We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as, imme- 
 diately, the result of a law in electricity, variously affecting 
 them according to their organic character, or respective 
 germinal constituents. In the poplar, the brush is unusually 
 vertical, and little divergent ; the reverse in the beech : in the 
 palm, a pencil has proceeded straight up for a certain distance, 
 radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards ; and so 
 on. We can here see at least traces of secondary means by 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 103 
 
 which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable 
 forms with which the earth is overspread. ( 47 ) 
 
 We turn to the minutiae of organic structure and embry- 
 ology, as affording us some further illustrations of an instruc- 
 tive kind. It is now ascertained by microscopic research, that 
 the basis of all vegetable and animal substances consists of 
 nucleated cells ; that is, cells having granules within them. 
 Xutriment is converted into these before being assimilated 
 by the system. The tissues are formed from them. The 
 ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally only a 
 cell with a contained granule. We see it acting this repro- 
 ductive part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants. 
 " The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its 
 organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules. 
 These, at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely 
 dependent for their nutrition on the surrounding elements, 
 develop themselves into new cells, which repeat the life of 
 their original. Amongst the higher tribes of the crypto- 
 gamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first cells 
 of the new structure are developed within it, and these 
 gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into 
 that primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed 
 structure in all plants." (* 8 ) Here the little cell becomes 
 directly a plant, the full formed living being. It is also worthy 
 of remark that, in the sponges, (an animal form,) a gemmule 
 detached from the body of the parent, and trusting for sus- 
 tentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast, becomes, 
 without further process, the new creature. Further, it has 
 been recently discovered by means of the microscope, that 
 there is, as far as can be judged, a perfect resemblance between 
 the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that early stage when 
 it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of the infusory 
 animalcules. One of the most remarkable of these, the volvox 
 globator, can hardly be distinguished from the germ which } 
 after passing through a long foetal progress, becomes a com- 
 plete mammifer, an animal of the highest class. It has even 
 been found that both are alike provided with those cilia, which) 
 
104 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 producing an appearance of revolving motion, is partly the 
 cause of the name given to this animalcule. These resem- 
 blances are the more entitled to notice, that they were made 
 by various observers, distant from each other at the time. ( 49 ) 
 It has likewise been noticed that the globules of the blood are 
 reproduced by the expansion of contained granules ; they are, 
 in short, distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous 
 generation. So that all animated nature may be said to be 
 based on this mode of origin ; the fundamental form of organic 
 being is a cell, having new cells forming within itself, by which 
 it is in time discharged, and which are again followed by 
 others and others, in endless succession. It is of course obvious 
 that, if these cells could be produced by any process from 
 inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that the fact 
 of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been 
 witnessed in that instance ; the possibility of the commence- 
 ment of animated creation by the ordinary laws of nature 
 might be considered as established. Now it was announced 
 some years ago by Prevost and Dumas, that globules could be 
 produced in albumen by electricity. If, therefore, these globules 
 be identical with the cells which are now held to be repro- 
 ductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by 
 artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This 
 has not yet been effected ; but it is known to be only a che- 
 mical process, the mode of which may be any day discovered 
 in the laboratory. ( 50 ) 
 
 Admitting, however, all these views regarding life and or- 
 ganization, the advocates of interference have still to say that 
 a transition from the inorganic to the organic, such as we 
 must suppose to have taken place in the early geological ages, 
 is no ordinary cognizable fact of the present time upon earth : 
 structure, form, life, are never seen to be imparted to the in- 
 sensate elements ; the production of the humblest plant or 
 animacule, otherwise than as a repetition of some parental 
 form, is not one of the possibilities of science ; if, then, we 
 trace back the generations of organisms to the Silurian or 
 any earlier epoch, and acknowledge the world of that time to 
 have been one in which the present order of natural events 
 
ORIGIN OP THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 105 
 
 was prevalent, we necessarily can see no natural origin for 
 species, and a miraculous one must be admitted. 
 
 Here we have undoubtedly the strongest of the argu- 
 ments usually adduced against a natural origin of life. Yet 
 it is one which may easily be replied to. In the first 
 place, there is no reason to suppose that, although life had 
 been imparted by natural means after the first cooling of the 
 surface to a suitable temperature, it would have continued there- 
 after to be capable of being imparted in like manner. The 
 great work of the peopling of this globe with living species 
 is mainly a fact accomplished: the highest known species 
 came as a crowning effect thousands of years ago. The work 
 being thus, to all appearance, finished, we are not necessa- 
 rily to expect that the origination of life and of species should 
 be conspicuously exemplified in the present day. We are 
 rather to expect that the vital phenomena presented to our 
 eyes should mainly, if not entirely, be limited to a regular 
 and unvarying succession of races by the ordinary means of 
 generation. This, however, is no more an argument against 
 a time when phenomena of the first kind prevailed, than it 
 would be a proof against the fact of a mature man having 
 once been a growing youth, that he is now seen growing no 
 longer. We might consider the primitive production of 
 species either as one phenomenon of the nature of the develop- 
 ment of an individual embryo, and that phenomenon as past, 
 just as the individual creation is perfected at birth, or as ex- 
 pressly and wholly a consequence of conditions, which being 
 temporary, the results were temporary also. From the occu- 
 pation of all the great geographical provinces with a more or 
 less full suite of the forms of life, a new development may 
 have hardly any chance of being now drawn forth, and none 
 of being advanced to any extent, even though the same life- 
 creating laws be still in force. Or the operations of these 
 laws might be observant of times, and those of rare occur- 
 rence, so that hundreds of human generations may pass 
 without an opportunity of witnessing such effects. However 
 it may actually have been, assuredly the most rigid disproof 
 of primitive creation as a fact of our time could be no con- 
 
106 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 elusive argument against a natural creation at a time when 
 the earth was vacant of all organic tenantry, if for such a 
 creation any positive arguments can be adduced. 
 
 Secondly, it is far from being certain that the primitive im- 
 parting of life and form to inorganic elements is not a fact of 
 our times. Such a doctrine is not generally received in the 
 scientific world ; but the reasons for rejecting it may at least 
 admit of criticism. The leading one is, that, in a great num- 
 ber of instances where the superficial observers of former 
 times assumed a n on -generative origin for life, (as in the ce- 
 lebrated case in Virgil's fourth Georgic,) either the direct 
 contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have 
 left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary genera- 
 tion did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observa- 
 tion. Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed 
 in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume 
 that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned ; 
 which is certainly far from being allowable. There are 
 several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find 
 great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable gene- 
 ration. Dr. Allen Thomson, one of the professors in the 
 Edinburgh University, has stated several considerations aris- 
 ing from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw 
 the balance of evidence in favour of the primitive production 
 of infusoria, the vegetation called mould, and the like. One 
 seems to be of great force ; namely, that the animalcules, 
 which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be produced 
 by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not 
 by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be 
 the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or 
 fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a 
 vegetable infusion ?( 51 ) It has been shown by the opponents 
 of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred 
 from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed 
 up or covered with a layer of oil, or only receives oxygen 
 which has passed through sulphuric acid, whereby all animal 
 admixtures have been destroyed, no animalcules are produced ; 
 but can we be sure, in such circumstances, that we have not 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 107 
 
 set aside some other simple condition requisite for a non-ex- 
 ovo generation ? Who can tell what effect such exclusion of 
 air or such mode of admitting oxygen may have upon the 
 operation of the imponderables in the case ? To this I do not 
 believe that any satisfactory answer could be given. 
 
 Perhaps the fashionable doctrine is in nothing placed in 
 greater difficulties than it is with regard to the entozoa, or 
 creatures which live within the bodies of others. These ani- 
 mals do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the 
 interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up 
 their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the cham- 
 bers of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and 
 other places having no communication from without. Some 
 are viviparous, others oviparous. Of the latter it cannot 
 reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pass through 
 the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they 
 are too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other. 
 Of the former, it cannot be conceived how they pass into 
 young animals certainly not by communication from the 
 parent, for it has often been found that entozoa do not appear 
 in certain generations of a human family, and some of pecu- 
 liar and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, 
 and in very extraordinary circumstances. A candid view of 
 the less popular doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form 
 of life, is taken by a distinguished living naturalist. " To 
 explain the beginning of these worms within the human body, 
 on the common doctrine that all created beings proceed from 
 their likes, or a primordial egg, is so difficult, that the mo- 
 derns have been driven to speculate, as our fathers did, on 
 their spontaneous birth; but they have received the hypo- 
 thesis with some modification. Thus it is not from putrefac- 
 tion or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of 
 these processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from the 
 aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already or- 
 ganized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces. * * 
 Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more 
 inexplicable than that of many of the inferior animals from 
 sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by 
 
108 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for 
 immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached 
 from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor 
 fall below that simplicity of structure which favours this won- 
 derful development ; and the supposition that, like morsels of 
 a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with 
 living parts, and in other favourable circumstances, continue 
 to live and be gradually changed into creatures of analogous 
 conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought into 
 comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We 
 think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the 
 fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes 
 which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and 
 absorbent sy stems." ( 52 ) Here particles of organized matter are 
 suggested as the germinal original of distinct and fully or- 
 ganized animals, many of which have a highly developed re- 
 productive system. How near such particles must be to the 
 inorganic form of matter may be j udged from what has been 
 said within the last few pages. 
 
 While these appear as good general arguments for primi- 
 tive life-production as a common occurrence in nature, there 
 is a series of facts which goes a fur way to prove that such 
 occurrences must have taken place in comparatively modern 
 times. The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the 
 attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free ; 
 hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestica- 
 tion of the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin 
 of man ; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. 
 Whence, then, the first progenitor of this hydatid ? So also 
 there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool, but never touches 
 it in its unwashed state. A particular insect disdains all food 
 but chocolate, and the larva of the oinopota cellaris lives no- 
 where but in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufac- 
 tured by man. There is likewise a fish called the pymelodes 
 cyclopum, which is only found in subterranean cavities con- 
 nected with certain specimens of the volcanic formation in 
 South America, dating from a time posterior to the arrange- 
 ments of the earth for our species. Whence the first pyme- 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 109 
 
 lodes cyclopum ? To have produced all these various animals, 
 there must have been means in force at a time long subse- 
 quent to that at which the production of life by miracle is 
 assumed to have taken place. And what is this but to con- 
 nect the ancient events, assumed to have come by miracle, 
 with the modern cases of doubted primitive generation ? Does 
 it not tend to show that the ancient and modern events are 
 of one character, both alike results of a silent immutable energy 
 imparted to nature by her Divine Author, and in the working 
 of which there is no regard to great or small ? 
 
 Seeing such reasons for believing the general dictum of the 
 philosophical world on primitive generation to be inconclu- 
 sive, we may be prepared to review without surprise or incre- 
 dulity the well-known experiments of Mr. Crosse, which 
 seemed to result in the production of a small species of insect 
 in considerable numbers. This gentleman was pursuing 
 some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful 
 voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of sili- 
 cate of potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their ap- 
 pearance. He afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a 
 deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live insects 
 emerge. Discouraged by the reception of his experiments, 
 Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some 
 years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with pre- 
 cisely the same results. This gentleman, besides trying the 
 first of the above substances, employed ferro-cyanate of potas- 
 sium, on account of its containing a larger proportion of 
 carbon, the principal element of organic bodies ; and from this 
 substance the insects were produced in increased numbers. 
 A few weeks sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful 
 battery of Mr. Crosse : but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes 
 required about eleven months, a ground of presumption in 
 itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned in the pheno- 
 menon. The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, 
 were in both cases remarkable, and nearly alike. In Mr. 
 Weekes' s apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, 
 then of a milky appearance ; round the negative wire of the 
 battery, dipped into the fluid, there gathered a quantity of 
 
110 PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 gelatinous matter. From this Mr. Weekes observed one of 
 the insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after 
 which it ascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought 
 concealment in an obscure corner of the apparatus. The 
 insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have been 
 the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, 
 and furnished with long bristles, which can only be seen by 
 the aid of the microscope. It is worthy of remark, that some 
 of these insects, soon after their existence had commenced, 
 were found to be likely to extend their species. They were 
 sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occa- 
 sionally they devoured each other. ( 53 ) 
 
 The reception of novelties in science must ever be regu- 
 lated very much by the amount of kindred or relative pheno- 
 mena which the public mind already possesses and acknow- 
 ledges, to which the new can be assimilated. A novelty, 
 however true, if there be no received truths with which it can 
 be shown in harmonious relation, has little chance of a 
 favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, there 
 is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as 
 from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher 
 three hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking 
 new fact which only could harmonize with the as yet un- 
 known Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it 
 would have been universally scoffed at in the scientific world, 
 such as it then was, or, at the best, interpreted in a thousand 
 wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. The 
 experiments above described, finding a public mind which 
 had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analo- 
 gous, were of course ungraciously received. It was held to 
 be impious even to surmise that animals could have been 
 formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised 
 by human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena 
 was said to be, that the insects were only developed from 
 ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden frame on 
 which the experiments took place. On these objections 
 the following remarks may be made. The supposition of 
 impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 1 1 1 
 
 implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experi- 
 mentalist could never be considered as the author of the 
 existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning 
 ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed 
 to him is, that he arranged the natural conditions under 
 which the true creative energy that flowing from the 
 primordial appointment of the Divine Author of all things 
 was pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesis 
 here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being 
 ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized 
 under certain physical conditions. When a human hand 
 brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did 
 an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute 
 every day, and which are followed by natural results ; but it 
 did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did 
 take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty 
 himself, as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the pre- 
 sumption that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, 
 there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, 
 every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude 
 the possibility of a development of the insects from ova. The 
 wood of the frame was baked in a powerful heat ; a bell- 
 shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the atmo- 
 sphere was excluded by the fumes constantly rising from the 
 liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so 
 arranged at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could 
 pass. The water was distilled, and the substance of the 
 silicate had been subjected to white heat. Thus every source 
 of fallacy seemed to be shut up. In such circumstances, a 
 candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphiloso- 
 phical in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to ihink 
 that there is less difficulty in believing in such a creation 
 having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two 
 instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same 
 insects should have chanced to arise from concealed ova.( 54 ) 
 
112 
 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 
 
 WE have now seen arguments, of both a general and par- 
 ticular kind, for the simply natural origin of life upon our 
 planet. But, whatever force may be allowed to these argu- 
 ments, no attempt has as yet been made to show how, even if 
 life originated in its first and humblest forms in this manner, 
 it passed on, otherwise than by a series of interferences, 
 through that double series of higher forms terminating in the 
 dicotyledons and mammalia, which we have seen rising 
 throughout the geological ages, and leaving the earth occupied 
 by its present organisms. 
 
 In now proposing to make such an attempt, I deem it ne- 
 cessary, for the sake of simplicity, to confine attention mainly 
 to the animal kingdom, the vegetable department of nature, 
 which starts from a common, or at least, contiguous basis, 
 being sure to fall into any system which may be found appli- 
 cable to the other. 
 
 It has already been intimated that the succession of animals 
 throughout the geological eras is generally conformable to 
 the gradation of forms in the animal scale, taking these in 
 broad masses, and allowing for such imperfections in the 
 series as geology itself at once leads us to expect, and partly 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 113 
 
 accounts for. We have seen that, overlooking an era with 
 doubtful vestiges of life, there was first one in which only 
 sea plants and invertebrate marine animals flourished ; after- 
 wards one presenting the meaner (cartilaginous) fishes ; and 
 that higher (osseous) fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, 
 came at long intervals throughout the subsequent ages. 
 Even when we pass into details, we find the succession to be 
 in so many instances conformable to the gradation of the 
 special groups of animals, that no doubt can remain that such 
 is the case in all. Thus, for example, there is, between the 
 Silurians and the oolite, a clear advance from humble to more 
 highly organized cephalopoda and echinodermata. In the 
 same time, the trilobite is exchanged for the superior but con- 
 nected form, limulus, and the brachiopoda sink beneath the 
 new and superior class of bivalves, the lamellibranchiata. 
 We see, in an order of fishes of the carbonigenous era, an 
 approximation to the reptile class. By-and-by, come ichthy- 
 osauri, half-fish half-crocodile; afterwards, a succession of 
 forms ending in true crocodiles. Some difficulties have, 
 indeed, been brought forward ; but they are, on a just view 
 of the sciences concerned, of no real importance, and I only 
 deem them worthy of notice in a subordinate place. ( 55 ) 
 
 Leaving for a future section the particulars of the animal 
 scale, which will there lend us further illustration, it may 
 now be observed that, while the external features of the 
 various creatures are so different, there has been traced, 
 throughout large groups of them, a fundamental unity of 
 organization, as implying, with respect to these groups, that 
 all were constructed upon one plan, though in a series of im- 
 provements and variations giving rise to the special forms, 
 and bearing reference to the conditions in which each animal 
 lives. Starting from the primitive germ, which, as we have 
 seen, is the representative of a particular order of full-grown 
 animals, we find all others to be merely advances from that 
 type, with the extension of endowments and modification of 
 forms which are required in each particular case ; each form, 
 also, retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, 
 
114 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 and tending to impress its own features on that which suc- 
 ceeds. 
 
 This principle is partly matter of familiar observation. It 
 is obvious to all, that an ordinary mammalian quadruped has 
 a strong analogy of form to the human being ; its head, its 
 forelegs, its hinder extremities, have each their representative 
 parts in our frame. But the ordinary observer is surprised to 
 learn how much further the principle is carried. For example, 
 the hind leg of the horse looks very different from one of our 
 limbs, in as far as it seems to have a knee presented backwards, 
 and possesses no toes. In reality, the part of the horse 
 corresponding to our knee is high up near the body of the 
 animal, and the hock corresponds to our heel. It has toes, 
 moreover ; but they are sunk in the hollow of a hoof, which 
 serves as a shield to that part. The horse, the dog, and many 
 other quadrupeds, may be said to walk upon their toes (hence 
 called digitigrade) : others, as the bear and badger, present 
 the whole foot to the ground, as man does (hence called 
 plantigrade). Thus, too, the wing of the bird contains bones 
 representing those of our arm, though modified for so different 
 a purpose. The paddles of the whale tribes and seals are 
 other curious modifications of a member substantially the 
 same. The bat, again, has the bones of its hand developed to 
 an unusual extent, so as to become a frame for the membrane 
 by which it flies : in the extinct pterodactyle, the same pur- 
 pose was chiefly served by a development of the forefinger 
 alone. The fundamental resemblance which lurks below 
 various appearances is often startling. Thus, the giraffe, 
 with its long neck, has, in that part, no more bones than are 
 to be found in the neck of the elephant or pig, which hardly 
 seem to have any neck at all. The cervical vertebrae are but 
 seven in every one of the mammalian animals. Sometimes, 
 an organ appears entirely wanting in one family, as feet 
 in the serpent tribes, a pelvic region in the whale, the wing 
 in the bird called the apteryx ; and yet it is not truly 
 wanting. Usually, some rudiment of it appears, as if nature 
 had been willing to give it, but had kept it back from a com- 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 115 
 
 plete development, as knowing it to be not needed in that 
 instance. On this ground, the notion of a much ridiculed 
 philosopher of the last century, respecting a human tail, may 
 be said to be not quite without foundation. Between the fifth 
 and sixth week, a tail exists in the human embryo ; it then 
 goes back; but still in the mature subject its elements are 
 seen clumped up in the bone at the bottom of the spine, the 
 os coccygis. 
 
 Unity of organization becomes the more remarkable when 
 we observe that the corresponding organs of animals, while 
 preserving a resemblance, are sometimes put to different uses. 
 For example, the ribs become, in the serpent, organs of loco- 
 motion, and the snout is extended, in the elephant, into an 
 instrument serving all the usual purposes of an arm and 
 hand. 
 
 It is- equally remarkable, that there should be, in the ori- 
 ginal plan of the animal structure, a double set of organs, one 
 or other of which is selected for development according to the 
 needs of the particular animal. Thus, there are in the plan 
 both gills and lungs, two wholly distinct kinds of respiratory 
 apparatus, the one being designed for a watery and the other 
 for an atmospheric medium. The mammalia, as creatures 
 destined to breathe the air, are furnished with lungs ; but, at 
 an early stage of the foetal progress, this is not the case. 
 They have at that time a branchial apparatus. Afterwards, 
 this goes back, and the lungs are developed from a different 
 portion of the organism. Lungs, on the other hand, are 
 possessed by certain fishes in a rudimental form ; it is the 
 well-known air-bladder of those fishes, which are understood 
 to profit by it, as an additional means of floating. So, also, 
 the baleen of the whale and the teeth of the land mammifer 
 are different organs. The whale, in embryo,' shows the rudi- 
 ments of teeth ; but, not being wanted, they are not deve- 
 loped, and baleen is brought forward instead. 
 
 But the most remarkable circumstance attending the law 
 of unity of organization is, that an organ will sometimes be 
 seen developed to a certain extent, but wholly without use. 
 i2 
 
116 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OP 
 
 This organ will, perhaps, be seen serving a purpose in a par- 
 ticular family of animals ; but we advance into an adjoining 
 or kindred family, and there find a rudiment of the same 
 organ, which, owing to the different conditions of this new 
 set of creatures, is of no kind of service. Thus, some of the 
 serpent tribes possess rudimentary limbs. In other instances, 
 a portion of organization necessary in one sex is also pre- 
 sented in the other, where it is not necessary. For example, 
 the mammae of the human female, by whom these organs are 
 obviously required, also exist in the male, who has no occasion 
 for them. It might be supposed that in this case there was a 
 regard to uniformity for mere appearance' sake ; but that no 
 such principle is concerned, appears from a much more re- 
 markable instance connected with the marsupial animals. 
 The female of that tribe has a process of bone advancing 
 from the pubes for the support of her pouch ; and this also 
 appears in the male marsupial, who has no pouch, and re- 
 quires none. 
 
 The same law of unity presides over the vegetable king- 
 dom. Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of 
 organs are always present, either in a developed or rudi- 
 mentary state ; and those which are rudimentary can be 
 developed by cultivation. The flowers which bear stamens 
 on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused to produce 
 both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency of 
 nourishment supplied to them. So, also, where a special 
 function is required for particular circumstances, nature 
 provides for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of 
 a common one. Thus, for instance, some plants destined to 
 live in arid situations, require to have a store of water which 
 they may slowly absorb. The need is arranged for by a cup- 
 like expansion round the stalk, in which water remains after 
 a shower. Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not a new 
 organ, but simply the metamorphosis of a leaf. 
 
 It is thus proved, with regard to the constituent beings of 
 large sections of the animal kingdom, that they are bound up 
 in a fundamental unity, however various in degree of endow- 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 117 
 
 ment and in the purposes which they serve in the world. 
 They may be said to stand in a connexion analogous to that 
 in which the planets are placed by the third law of Kepler. 
 And the inference with regard to their origin is the same. 
 Precisely as it is impossible to suppose a distinct exertion 
 or fiat of Almighty Power for the formation of the earth, 
 wrought up as it is in a complex dynamical connexion, first 
 with Yenus on the one hand and Mars on the other, and 
 secondly with all the other members of the system, so is it 
 impossible to conceive the same power using particular means 
 for the production of a particular animal species, an indivi- 
 dualized fraction, as it now appears, in a vast system which 
 would not be complete without it, and into whose adjacent 
 parts it melts by the finest shadings. Supposing, for a 
 moment, that each species had been distinct in its origin, 
 these shadings would have been unnecessary; and there 
 would at least have been a strong probability against a unity 
 of organization being adopted as part of the plan. In that 
 case, abortive or rudimentary organs must have been con- 
 sidered as a kind of blemish the thing of all others most 
 irreconcilable with that idea of perfection which a general 
 view of nature irresistibly attributes to its author. If, on the 
 other hand, we admit that the animal kingdom took its rise 
 in a general law, we see in the shadings and the organic 
 unity something not only harmonious with, but essential to 
 the system. Rudimentary organs, too, appear but as harm- 
 less peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of 
 the manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to 
 work. 
 
 It must be easy to see how this class of facts bears on the 
 great question. Organisms we know to have been produced, 
 not at once, but in the course of a vast series of ages ; here 
 we now see that they are not a group of individually entire 
 things accidentally associated, but parts of great masses, 
 nicely connected, and integral in their respective totalities. 
 Time, and a succession of forms in gradation and affinity, 
 become elements in the idea of organic creation. It must be 
 seen that the whole phenomena thus pass into strong analogy 
 
118 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 with those attending the production of individual organisms. 
 But it becomes something more than analogy when we have 
 learned the facts attending the embryonic development of 
 animals. First surmised by the illustrious Harvey, after- 
 wards illustrated by Hunter in his wondrous collection at the 
 Royal College of Surgeons, finally advanced to mature con- 
 clusions by Tiedemann, St. Hilaire, and Serres, embryonic 
 development is now a science. Its primary positions are 
 1. that the embryos of all animals are not distinguishably 
 different from each other ; and, 2. that those of all animals 
 pass through a series of phases of development, each of which 
 is the type or analogue of the permanent configuration of 
 tribes inferior to it in the scale. With regard to the latter 
 proposition, it is to be remarked that, while it is generally 
 true of the whole forms of animal being, it is more particu- 
 larly true of departments of the organization, as the nutritive 
 system, the vascular system, the nervous system, &c., each of 
 which is destined for a peculiar degree of development in dif- 
 ferent groups of animals, according to their needs. Speaking, 
 however, roundly, it is undoubted, respecting nearly all 
 animals, that they pass in embryo through phases resembling 
 the general as well as the particular characters of others of 
 lower grade. For example, the comatula, a free-swimming 
 star-fish, is, at one stage of its early progress, a crinoid that 
 is, a star-fish fixed upon a stalk at the bottom of the sea. It 
 advances from the form of one of the lower to that of one of 
 the higher echinodermata. The animals of its first form 
 were, as we have seen, among the most abundant in the 
 earliest fossiliferous rocks : they began to decline in the New 
 Red Sandstone era, and they were succeeded in the Oolitic 
 age by animals of the form of the mature comatula. Thus, 
 too, the insect, standing near the head of the articulated 
 animals, is, in the larva state, an annelid or worm, the anne- 
 lides being the lowest in the same class. The higher crus- 
 tacea, as the crab and lobster, at their escape from the ovum, 
 resemble the perfect animal of the inferior order entomo- 
 straca, and pass through the forms of transition which charac- 
 terize the intermediate tribes of Crustacea. The salmon, a 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 119 
 
 highly organized fish, exhibits, in its early stages, as has 
 been remarked, the gelatinous dorsal cord, the heterocercal 
 tail, and inferior position of the mouth, which mark the 
 mature example of the cartilaginous fishes. The frog, again, 
 for some time after its birth, is a fish with external gills, and 
 other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of which are 
 changed as it advances to maturity and becomes a land 
 animal. The mammifer only passes through still more stages, 
 according to its higher place in the scale. Nor is man him- 
 self exempt from this law. His first form is that which is 
 permanent in the animalcule. His organization gradually 
 passes through conditions generally resembling a worm, a fish, 
 a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its 
 specific maturity. At one of the last stages of his foetal 
 career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is charac- 
 teristic of the perfect ape ; this is suppressed, and he may then 
 be said to take leave of the simial type, and become a true 
 human creature. Even as we shall find, the varieties of his 
 race are represented in the progressive development of an in- 
 dividual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the 
 highest point yet attained in the animal scale. 
 
 To come to particular points of the organization. The 
 brain of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in com- 
 plexity of organization and fulness of development, is, at one 
 early period, only " a simple fold of nervous matter, with 
 difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a little tail- 
 like prolongation towards the higher parts, and which had 
 been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal 
 marrow. Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain 
 of an adult fish, thus assuming in transitu the form that in the 
 fish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is 
 become more complex, the parts more distinct, and the spinal 
 marrow better marked ; it is now the brain of a reptile. The 
 change continues ; by a singular motion, certain parts (cor- 
 pora quadrigemind) which had hitherto appeared on the upper 
 surface, now pass towards the lower ; the former is their per- 
 manent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and 
 
120 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OP 
 
 mammalia. This is another advance in the scale, but more 
 remains yet to be done. The complication of the organ in- 
 creases; cavities termed ventricles are formed, which do not 
 exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds ; curiously organized parts, 
 such as the corpora striata, are added ; it is now the brain of 
 the mammalia. Its last and final change alone seems want- 
 ing, that which shall render it the brain of MAN. ( 5G ) And 
 this change in time takes place. 
 
 So also with the heart. This organ, in the mammalia, con- 
 sists of four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in 
 fishes of two only, while in the articulated animals it is 
 merely a prolonged tube. Now in the mammal foetus, at a 
 certain early stage, the organ has the form of a prolonged 
 tube ; and a human being may be said to have then the heart 
 of an insect. Subsequently, it is shortened and widened, and 
 becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle 
 and an auricle ; it is now the heart of a fish. A subdivision 
 of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as 
 in the heart of the reptile tribes ; lastly, the ventricle being 
 also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart. 
 
 We have now to remember that, corresponding generally 
 to these progressive forms in the development of individuals, 
 has been the succession of animal forms in the course of time. 
 Our earth bore crinoidea before it bore the higher echinoder- 
 mata. It presented crinoidea, annelides, and mollusca,, before 
 it bore fishes, and when fishes came, the first forms were 
 those cartilaginous types which correspond with the early 
 fo3tal condition of higher orders. Afterwards there were 
 reptiles, then mammifers, and finally, as we know, came man. 
 Was it, then, too much to say that, when we learned the 
 facts of embryonic development, we should see something 
 more than analogy between the progress of species upon the 
 earth and the production of an individual organism ? 
 
 The tendency of all the illustrations is undoubtedly to 
 make us look to development as the principle which has been 
 immediately and mainly concerned in the peopling of this 
 globe, a process extending over a vast space of time, but which 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 121 
 
 is nevertheless connected in character with the briefer process 
 by which an individual being is evoked from a simple germ. 
 What mystery is there here and how shall I proceed to enun- 
 ciate the conception which I have ventured to form of what 
 may prove to be its proper solution ! It is an idea by no 
 means calculated to impress by its greatness, or to puzzle by 
 its profoundness. It is as much marked by simplicity as 
 perhaps any other of those which have explained the great 
 secrets of nature. But here, again, it may be said, lies one 
 of its strongest claims to our faith. 
 
 My proposition is that the several series of animated beings, 
 from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most 
 recent, are the results, first, of an inherent impulse in the 
 forms of life to advance, in definite times, by generation, 
 through grades of organization terminating in the highest 
 dicotyledons and vertebrata, these grades being few in num- 
 ber, and generally marked by intervals of organic character 
 which we find to be a practical difficulty in ascertaining 
 affinities ; second, of another inherent impulse connected with 
 the vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to modify 
 organic structures in accordance with external circumstances, 
 as food, the nature of the habitat, and the meteoric agencies, 
 these being the " adaptations" of the natural theologian. We 
 may contemplate these phenomena as ordained to take place 
 in every situation, and at every time, where and when the 
 requisite materials and conditions are presented in other 
 orbs as well as in this in any geographical area of this 
 globe which may at any time arise observing only the 
 variations due to difference of materials and of conditions. 
 The nucleated vesicle is the fundamental form of all or- 
 ganization, the meeting-point between the inorganic and 
 the organic the end of the mineral and beginning of the 
 vegetable and animal kingdoms, which thence start in dif- 
 ferent directions, but in a general parallelism and analogy. 
 This nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and inde- 
 pendent being, as well as the starting point of the foetal 
 progress of every higher individual in creation, both animal 
 
122 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 and vegetable. We have seen that it is a form of being which 
 there is some reason to believe electric agency will produce 
 though not perhaps usher into full life in albumen, one of 
 those component materials of animal bodies, in whose com- 
 binations it is believed there is no chemical peculiarity for- 
 bidding their being any day realized in the laboratory. 
 Remembering these things, it seems, after all, an obvious idea 
 that a chemico- electric operation, "by which germinal vesicles . 
 were produced, was the first phenomenon in organic creation, 
 and that the second was an advance of these through a suc- 
 cession of higher grades, and a variety of modifications, in 
 accordance with laws of the same absolute nature as those by 
 which the Almighty rules the physical department of nature. 
 
 Leaving the first of these supposed processes to rest upon 
 the arguments which have been adduced with regard to a 
 possible transition from the inorganic to the organic, as a 
 natural fact, we have two things to be accounted for first, 
 grade ; and, second, external peculiarities. We have to con- 
 vince ourselves, both that a fish may advance to be a reptile, 
 and a reptile to*be a bird being a distinct step onward in 
 complexity of organization and that particular organs are 
 capable of being modified, so as to suit external conditions, 
 for example, the bill of a bird to the picking up of food in 
 shallow waters, or the throat of the foetal marsupial to the 
 reception of the mother's milk without a danger of choking. 
 
 With regard to grade, it may be admitted at once that, in 
 Nature's government, there is no observable appearance of 
 such promotions. But it may be asked, if, supposing such 
 events to be within the scope of nature, we are necessarily to 
 expect to see them take place, or even to hear of them having 
 been recorded. To settle this question, let us first inquire 
 into the proportion of the number of these grades to the space 
 of time believed to be represented in the fossiliferous series of 
 rocks. Mr. Lyell tells us that the space between our sun and 
 some of the remote star- clusters, of which the distance to 
 Sirius (not less than nineteen millions of millions of miles) is 
 but a fraction, may no more than compare with the space of 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 123 
 
 time which has probably elapsed since the origin of the coral- 
 line limestone over which the Niagara is precipitated at the 
 Falls. Now, the number of grades of what may be called the 
 first degree (transitions from class to class) passed through 
 by the vertebrata since their origin in the Devonian rocks is, 
 at the utmost, three. Such a leap in organic progress has, 
 therefore, only taken place once in many millions of millions 
 of years. If such be the case, all chance of such grade transi- 
 tions being witnessed within the four thousand years of his- 
 torical humanity vanishes. As to the possible occurrence of 
 such unusual events in the midst of a series which appear 
 fixed and regular, let us call forward an illustration from the 
 Ninth Bridgewaier Treatise of Mr. Babbage. The reader is 
 requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating 
 machine, and observing it. It is moved by a weight, and 
 there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle round 
 its axis, at short intervals, presenting to the eye successively, 
 a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference. 
 
 Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., 
 of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate ante- 
 cedent by unity. 
 
 " Now, reader," says Mr. Babbage, " Let me ask you how 
 long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced 
 that the engine has been so adjusted, that it will continue, 
 while its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of 
 natural numbers ? Some minds are so constituted, that after 
 passing the first hundred terms, they will be satisfied that 
 they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred 
 terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth term the 
 propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty 
 thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That term will 
 be fifty thousand and one ; and the same regular succession 
 will continue ; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term 
 will still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken 
 chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes, from 
 one up to one hundred million. 
 
 " True to the vast induction which has been made, the next 
 
124 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 succeeding term will be one hundred million and one ; but 
 the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead 
 of being one hundred million and two, is one hundred million 
 ten thousand and two. The whole series from the commence- 
 ment being thus, 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 99,999,999 
 
 100,000,000 
 
 regularly as far as 100,000,001 
 
 100,010,002 the law changes. 
 
 100,030,003 
 
 100,060,004 
 
 100,100,005 
 
 100,150,006 
 
 100,210,007 
 
 100,280,008 
 
 " The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed 
 at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger 
 than we expected by 10,000. The next term is larger than 
 was anticipated by 30,000, and the excess of each term above 
 what we had expected forms the following table : 
 
 10,000 
 
 30,000 
 
 60,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 150,000 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 125 
 
 being, in fact, the series of triangular number s,( 57 ) each mul- 
 tiplied by 10,000. 
 
 " If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by 
 the wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a 
 thousand terms, they continue to follow the new law relating 
 to the triangular numbers ; but after watching them for 2761 
 terms, we find that this law fails in the case of the 2762nd 
 term. 
 
 " If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law 
 then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a 
 different manner, on triangular numbers. This will continue 
 through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again intro- 
 duced which extends over about 950 terms, and this, too, like 
 all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which 
 appear at different intervals. 
 
 " Kow it must be observed that the law that each number 
 presented by the engine is greater by unity than the preceding 
 number, which law the observer had deduced from an induc- 
 tion of a hundred million instances, was not the true law that 
 regulated its action, and that the occurrence of the number 
 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term was as necessary a 
 consequence of the original adjustment, and might have been as 
 fully foreknown at the commencement, as was the regular suc- 
 cession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its immediate 
 antecedent. The same remark applies to the next apparent 
 deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induc- 
 tion of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with this 
 limitation only that whilst their consecutive introduction at 
 various definite intervals, is a necessary consequence of the 
 mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of analysis 
 does not enable us to predict the periods themselves at which 
 the more distant laws will be introduced." 
 
 It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to 
 the question under consideration. Let us remember that the 
 gestation of a single organism is the work of but a few days, 
 weeks, or months ; but the gestation (so to speak) of a 
 whole creation is a matter involving the enormous spaces of 
 
126 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 time which have been described. Suppose that an ephe- 
 meron, hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, 
 were capable of observing the fry of the frog in the water 
 below. In its aged afternoon, having seen no change upon 
 them for such a long time, it would be little qualified to con- 
 ceive that the external branchiae of these creatures were to 
 decay, and be replaced by internal lungs, that feet were to be 
 developed, the tail erased, and the animal then to become a 
 denizen of the land. Precisely such may be our difficulty in 
 conceiving that plants and animals are capable of advancing 
 by generation to a higher type of being. Granting that, 
 during the whole time which we call the historical era, there 
 have been no movements of this kind, nor even any of the 
 less rare transitions in which only specific modifications are 
 concerned, we know the historical era to be only an infinitesi- 
 mal portion of the entire age of our globe. We do not know 
 what may have happened during the ages which preceded 
 its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in 
 ages yet in the distant future. All, therefore, that we can 
 properly infer from the apparent fixity of organic forms is, 
 that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the time im- 
 mediately passing before our eyes. Mr. Babbage's illustra- 
 tion enables us to understand how this ordinary procedure 
 may be subordinate to a higher law which in proper season 
 interrupts and changes it. 
 
 It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher 
 animals, the new being passes through stages in which it is 
 successively fish-like and reptile-like. But the resemblance 
 is not to the adult fish or the adult reptile, but to the fish and 
 reptile at a certain point in their fetal progress ; this holds 
 true with regard to the vascular, nervous, and other systems 
 alike. It seems as if gestation consisted of two distinct and 
 independent stages one devoted to the developme/it of the 
 new being through the conditions of the inferior types, or, 
 rather through the corresponding first stages of their develop- 
 ment; another perfecting and bringing the new being to a 
 healthy maturity, on the basis of the point of development 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 127 
 
 reached. This may be illustrated by a simple diagram. ( 3S ) 
 The foetus of all the four classes may be supposed to advance 
 in an identical condition to the point A. 
 The fish there diverges and passes along 
 a line apart, and peculiar to itself, to its 
 mature state at F. The reptile, bird, and D 
 mammal, go on together to C, where the 
 reptile diverges in like manner, and ad- 
 vances by itself to R. The bird diverges 
 atD, and goes on to B. Here it is appa- 
 rent that the only thing required for an 
 advance from one grade to another in the 
 generative process is that, for example, the 
 fish embryo should not diverge at A, but 
 go on to C before it diverges, in which case the progeny 
 will be, not a fish, but a reptile. To protract the straightfor- 
 ward part of the gestation over a small space is all that is ne- 
 cessary. 
 
 Xow we may never see an example of the working of the 
 actual law which is supposed to be capable of producing such 
 an advance of grade ; but something approaching to it in effect 
 has been observed. Sex is fully ascertained to be a matter 
 of development. All beings are, at one stage of the embryotic 
 progress, female ; a certain number of them are afterwards 
 advanced to be of the more powerful sex. From this it will be 
 understood that no absolute distinction exists ; all such are 
 merely apparent. The ingenious Huber first made us aware 
 of an instance, in a humble department of the animal world, 
 of arrangements being made by the animals themselves for 
 adjusting the law of development to the production of a par- 
 ticular sex. Amongst bees, as amongst several other insect 
 tribes, there is in each community but one true female, the 
 queen bee, the workers being false females or neuters ; that 
 is to say, sex is carried on in them to a point intermediate 
 between the female and male, where it is attended by sterility. 
 The preparatory states of the queen bee occupy sixteen days ; 
 those of the neuters, twenty ; and those of males, twenty-four. 
 Now it is a fact, settled by innumerable observations and ex- 
 
128 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 periments, that the bees can so modify a larva, which other- 
 wise would result in a worker, that, when the perfect insect 
 emerges from the pupa, it is found to be a queen or true fe- 
 male. For this purpose they enlarge its cell, make a pyra- 
 midal hollow to allow of its assuming a vertical instead of a 
 horizontal position, keep it warmer than other larvae are kept, 
 and feed it with a peculiar kind of food. From these simple 
 circumstances, leading to a shortening of the embryotic con- 
 dition, results a creature different in form, and also in dispo- 
 sitions, from what would have otherwise been produced. 
 Some of the organs possessed by the worker are here wanting, 
 We have a creature " destined to enjoy love, to burn with 
 jealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her 
 time without labour," instead of one " zealous for the good of 
 the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an 
 immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains 
 of parturition ; laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, 
 skilful ; incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in 
 collecting honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in con- 
 structing cells and the like ! paying the most respectful and 
 assiduous attention to objects which, had its ovaries been de- 
 veloped, it would have hated and pursued with the most vin- 
 dictive fury till it had destroyed them!"( 59 ) All these 
 changes may be produced by a mere modification of the em- 
 bryotic progress, which is within the power of the adult 
 animals to effect. By the arrangements made and the food 
 given, the embryo becomes sooner fit for being ushered forth 
 in its imago or perfect state. Development may be said to be 
 v *thus arrested at a particular stage that early one at which 
 the female sex is complete. In the other circumstances, it is 
 allowed to go on four days longer, and a stage is then reached 
 between the two sexes, which in this species is destined to be 
 the perfect condition of a large portion of the community. 
 Four days more make it a perfect male. It may be observed 
 that there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined dis- 
 tinction between the sexes of the young bees. The queen 
 lays the whole of the eggs which are designed to become 
 workers, before she begins to lay those which become males. 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 129 
 
 But the condition of her reproductive system evidently 
 governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked that when her 
 impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day of 
 her entire existence, she lays only eggs which become males. 
 
 We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable 
 illustration of the principle of development, although in an 
 operation limited to the production of sex only. Let it not 
 be said that the phenomena concerned in the generation of 
 bees may be very different from those concerned in the repro- 
 duction of the higher animals. There is a unity throughout 
 nature which makes the one case an instructive reflection of 
 the other. () 
 
 We shall now see an instance of development operating 
 within the production of what approaches to the character of 
 variety of species. It is fully established that a human family, 
 tribe, or nation, is liable, in the course of generations, to be 
 either advanced from a mean form to a higher one, or degraded 
 from a higher to a lower, by the influence of the physical 
 conditions in which it lives. The coarse features, and other 
 structural peculiarities of the negro race only continue while 
 these people live amidst the circumstances usually associated 
 with barbarism. In a more temperate clime, and higher 
 social state, the face and figure become greatly refined. The 
 few African nations which possess any civilization exhibit 
 forms approaching the European ; and when the same people 
 in the United States of America have enjoyed a within-door 
 life for several generations, they assimilate to the whites 
 amongst whom they live. On the other hand, there are 
 authentic instances of a people originally well-formed and 
 good-looking, being brought, by imperfect diet and a variety 
 of physical hardships, to a meaner form. It is remarkable 
 that prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution of 
 the cranium, and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, 
 are peculiarities always produced by these miserable condi- 
 tions, for they indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards 
 the type of the lower animals. Thus we see nature alike 
 willing to go back and to go forward. Both effects are simply 
 
130 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 the result of the operation of the law of development in the 
 generative system. 
 
 Let us trace this law also in the production of certain 
 classes of monstrosities. A human foetus is often left with 
 one of the most important parts of its frame imperfectly 
 developed ; the heart, for instance, goes no further than the 
 three- chambered form, so that it is the heart of a reptile. 
 There are even instances of this organ being left in the two- 
 chambered or fish- form. Here we have apparently a realiza- 
 tion of the converse of advance of grade, so far, at least, as one 
 organ is concerned. Seeing a complete specific retrogression 
 in one point, how easy it is to suppose a simply natural pro- 
 cess, reversing the phenomenon, and making a fish mother 
 develop a reptile heart, or a reptile mother develop a mammal 
 one. It is no great boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy 
 of force in the measure of this under-adequacy (and the one 
 thing seems as natural an occurrence as the other) would 
 suffice in a natatorial bird to give it as a progeny the orni- 
 thorhynchus, or might give the progeny of an ornithorhynchus 
 the mouth and feet of a true mammalian, and thus complete at 
 two stages a passage from one class to another. 
 
 Perhaps, with the bulk of men, even those devoted to 
 science, the great difficulty is, after all, in conceiving the par- 
 ticulars of such a process as would be required to advance a 
 fish into a reptile. And yet no difficulty could well be less 
 substantial, seeing that the metamorphosis of the tadpole into 
 the frog a phenomenon presented to our observation in count- 
 less instances every spring is, in part at least, as thoroughly 
 a transmutation of the fish organization into that of the reptile, 
 as the supposable change of sauroid fishes into saurian reptiles 
 could ever be. It is different, as being only a process in ordi- 
 nary generation ; but it realizes, as far as the necessary organic 
 changes are concerned, the hypothetic view of an advance of 
 one grade of animal forms into another. There is another 
 fact connected with the reproduction of the batrachian order 
 of reptiles, that, when the young are enclosed in a dark box 
 sunk in a river, with holes through which the water may flow, 
 the animals grow, but never undergo their destined change : 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 131 
 
 they became gigantic tadpoles, and the reptile characters are 
 not developed. Here the progeny of a reptile literally be- 
 comes a fish, and transition of species is thoroughly realized, 
 although in retrogression. And this is an instance in which 
 the whole animal is concerned. Now surely no one will deny 
 that that which we see nature undo she is able to do, and 
 might be seen doing, if the proper occasion were to occur, or 
 were the requisite attendant conditions realized. 
 
 So much with regard to grade. Let us now consider the 
 principle of modifidbility that part of the hypothesis to which 
 we are to look for an account of the external variations and 
 adaptation of animals. 
 
 Here we are directly opposed by the prevalent doctrine 
 among naturalists, that species is intransible, and has so 
 continued during all the time that scientific observation 
 has existed. There is a certain volubility, they admit, in 
 organisms, throughout successive generations, and for this 
 variability external conditions may account ; but such varia- 
 tions show a disposition to give way, when the original con- 
 ditions are resumed, or when the changed individual is 
 mingled in alliance with the original stock. There is there- 
 fore a fixed and immutable character which we call species, 
 and which can only be traced to an origin differing as an event 
 from the procedure of nature in our own time. I trust to be 
 able to show that this doctrine is in such a condition with 
 regard to facts, and has of late been obliged by facts to make 
 so many shifts in its assumptions, that it is not entitled to the 
 respect usually assigned to it. 
 
 The doctrine theoretically attaches the term species to 
 every organism which manifests the same peculiarities 
 throughout a series of generations. Practically, without 
 waiting to watch successive generations, or where, from the 
 extinction of the organism, this may be impossible, natura- 
 lists give the appellation to every organism which presents a 
 plurality of individuals similarly marked. Very small pecu- 
 liarities suffice. A particular spot on the wing of a butterfly 
 constitutes it a distinct species. The Golden Plover of Aus- 
 tralia was so reckoned, and got the name of Xanthocheilus, 
 
 K2 
 
132 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 from only having a small portion of yellow in the commissure 
 of its bill. At the same time, in palaeontology, such a 
 peculiarity as an extra-plication in the enamel of a fossil 
 pachiderm's tooth, is sufficient to obtain a specific name for 
 that animal, and constitute its origin a separate miracle. 
 With equal facility, naturalists of this predominant order 
 make up groups of species into genera, and groups of genera 
 into families and tribes. 
 
 Suppose the doctrine were to be taken according to the 
 practice, we should possess a fact speaking strongly against 
 fixity of species. It has been pointed out by an eminent 
 botanist that, amongst recent fossil plants, are poplars, pines, 
 birches, and hornbeams, like those now existing, but not the 
 same. Thus one species has replaced another in even com- 
 paratively recent times. It may be asked, if the same change 
 of species has not been going on since. The vague descrip- 
 tions of ancient botanists forbid our speaking confidently of 
 the intermediate ages. But look to the present time. In 
 districts examined narrowly at no distant day, new species 
 are continually being found by new investigators. It will be 
 said, that these additions are owing to the acuteness of 
 modern observers. But this is begging the whole question. 
 " We do not know," says our author, " that we are entitled 
 to assert that botanists were so mole-eyed thirty years ago, 
 that their quick-sighted successors have been able to add 
 twenty-five per cent, to the number of ascertained species 
 growing at their own doors." ( 6I ) Grant, then, that the pecu- 
 liar plants in question really are species, the probability un- 
 doubtedly is, that they are new species, true examples of that 
 very phenomenon which the superstition of science would 
 hold to be a supernatural event. 
 
 Still take the doctrine according to the practice, and let us 
 see how it stands with regard to certain facts recently ascer- 
 tained. Amidst all the dogmatism which has been indulged 
 in on this subject, the assumed distinction of species has 
 given way in numberless instances, both in the vegetable and 
 animal kingdoms. In botany, the wider distinction of genus, 
 and even that of whole tribes, has proved in some cases falla- 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 133 
 
 cious. According to Dr. Lindley, " So entirely in the 
 simplest forms of Thallogens [an assemblage embracing sea- 
 weeds, fungi, and lichens] is all trace of series missing, that 
 in some of them their reproductive matter has been regarded 
 by certain writers as altogether of an ambiguous nature. 
 In their opinion, it is even uncertain whether this matter 
 will reproduce its like, and whether it is not a mere repre- 
 sentation of the vital principle of vegetation, capable of being 
 called into action either as a Fungus, an Alga, or a Lichen, 
 according to the particular conditions of heat, light, mois- 
 ture, and medium, in which it is placed ; producing Fungi 
 upon dead or putrid organic beings; Lichens upon living 
 vegetables, earth, or stones ; and Algae where water is the 
 medium in which they are developed. Kiitzing endeavours to 
 maintain the following propositions connected with this sub- 
 ject: 1st, the formation of organic matter can only take 
 place by means of the previously dissolved elements of other 
 organic principles ; 2nd, simple globules, such as Crypto- 
 coccus, Palmella, and Protococcus, can give birth to different 
 formations, according to the influence of light, air, and tem- 
 perature ; 3rd, we must regard all the forms of lower algae as 
 vegetations of a very simple structure, and distinguish them 
 from each other, notwithstanding that in certain circum- 
 stances they maj^ raise themselves to vegetations of a higher 
 form ; for, in other circumstances, they can exist and mul- 
 tiply independently ; 4th, the same formation may be pro- 
 duced by primitive formations of altogether different kinds." 
 " It has been said," adds Dr. Lindley, " that Algae are 
 aquatics, while Lichens and Fungi are terrestrial ; but Fungi 
 will develop in water, when they assume the form ofAlgce"(^) 
 Undoubtedly, eight so-called genera of fungi are now set 
 down as only variations of one plant (Telephora sulphurea), 
 arising from peculiar conditions of culture. 
 
 Even in higher departments of the vegetable kingdom, the 
 revolutions have been very remarkable. Six so-called species 
 of pine are wound up into one in a recent memoir on the 
 Coniferae. The cowslip, primrose, oxlip, and polyanthus, 
 which were always regarded as distinct species, are now 
 
134 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 found to be producible from one set of seeds, under various 
 conditions ; they are radically one plant. So also " the 
 clove, pink, and carnation are only varieties of a flower 
 growing among the ruins of some of our old castles, the 
 Dianthus caryophyllus." The artichoke of the garden and 
 the cardoon (a kind of thistle) of the South American wild, 
 are held as distinct species in all botanical works ; yet the 
 artichoke, in neglect, degenerates into the cardoon. ( 63 ) The 
 ranunculus aquatilis and the ranunculus hederaceus are, in 
 like manner, set down as distinct species; but behold the 
 secret of their difference ! While the former plant remains 
 in the water, its leaves are all finely cut and have their divi- 
 sions hairy ; but when the stems reach the surface, the leaves 
 developed in the atmosphere are widened, rounded, and simply 
 lobed. Should the seeds of this water plant fall upon a soil 
 merely moist without being inundated, the result is the ranun- 
 culus hederaceus the presumed distinct species with short 
 stalks, and none of the leaves divided into hairy cut work ! ( 4 ) 
 To come to a more familiar instance. It is now fully ascer- 
 tained that the various bread-forming grains, wheat, barley, 
 oats, rye, are resolvable into one. If wheat be sown in June, 
 and mown down so as not to be allowed to come to ear till the 
 next season, the product will be found to consist partly of rye 
 or some other of the cereals. Oats have in like manner been 
 transformed into rye, barley, and even wheat. Till a recent 
 period, this phenomenon was doubted ; but it has been tested 
 by experiment, and reported on by so many credible persons, 
 that it can no longer be rejected. And it appears that poor- 
 ness of soil has the same effect as mowing down. One 
 observer states that, in a field of wheat near Lucerne, he 
 saw ears resembling barley, but with grains similar to rye, 
 growing from the same stem with ears of wheat. ( 65 ) Dr. 
 Lindley, who publishes these facts, acknowledges there being 
 no theoretical improbability in such transformations, seeing 
 that, " in orchidaceous plants, forms just as different as wheat, 
 barley, rye, and oats, have been proved by the most rigorous 
 evidence to be accidental variations of one common form, 
 brought about no one knows how, but before our eyes, and 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 135 
 
 rendered permanent by equally mysterious agency." It is 
 more than probable that the greater number of what may be 
 called the domesticated plants, are unsuspected variations of 
 others, which, growing wild, are recognised as different species. 
 One noted instance of such transition has been detected within 
 the last few years, in our different kinds of cabbage, savoy, 
 brocoli, and cauliflower. They are all common descendants 
 of a plant which is sometimes found growing wild upon our 
 sea-shores, the brassica oleracea a transition which no one 
 can appreciate till he has compared the tough slender stem 
 and small glaucous leaf of the original, with the stout fleshy 
 stem and large succulent leaves, sometimes gathered into a 
 heart several feet in circumference, which he will find in the 
 most familiar of the cabbages. 
 
 What respect, it may be asked, can we attach to the doc- 
 trine of intransibility of species, when we find its adherents 
 wrong in so many instances ? Admit their explanation, that 
 a mere mistake has been made in calling that species which 
 was only variety, what guarantee can we have for the fixity 
 of any so-called species, when it has given way in such in- 
 stances ? What t* species, if it cannot be fixed upon such 
 a vast assemblage as the Thallogens, or even the progeny 
 of the Telephora sulphurea ? Apart from all theorising 
 about the absolute characters of species, do not these facts 
 show a transibility and intercommunion of forms totally at 
 variance with those general opinions as to fixity which now 
 reign in the scientific world ? 
 
 In the animal kingdom, we have fewer illustrations of 
 modifiability or transition ; but they tend to exactly the same 
 effect. We shall here pass over the succession of forms 
 which appears in common infusions. Neither shall we enter 
 into the particulars of a late curious investigation by a 
 Danish naturalist, which results in showing alternative forms 
 in the succession of certain animals low in the scale, in- 
 cluding the medusa; that is, as it were, A giving birth 
 to B, B to C, and C to A again. C* 5 ) Such matters are as yet 
 obscure, however highly they may promise in time to illus- 
 trate this question. Let us rather look to departments of this 
 
136 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OP 
 
 kingdom which come broadly under the observation of natu- 
 ralists. In the mollusca there occurs a modifiability of a most 
 remarkable nature. Fresh- water species of these, exposed to 
 brackish water, assume, where able to survive the change, 
 characters in the exterior form of the shell proper to their 
 marine congeners, and involving differences from the original 
 animal much greater than is usually sufficient with naturalists 
 to constitute a distinction of species, if not of tribe or family. 
 Many years ago, Pennant remarked the singular modification 
 of stomach which the common trout appears to have under- 
 gone in the lakes of the county of Galway, in consequence of 
 feeding on shell-fish. The integument has become as thick 
 as the gizzard of a bird, manifestly in consequence of an effort 
 of nature to accommodate herself to the peculiar food of the 
 animal. So also, when a common gull was fed upon corn, 
 the parietes of the stomach were found, on examination after 
 death, to be thickened. ( 67 ) The peculiar forms of the mandibles 
 of birds are grounds of specific distinction ; yet it is now 
 ascertained that these are variable under particular conditions 
 as to food. It has been tried with confined birds ; and even 
 in a wild state there occur individuals strangely modified in 
 this respect, the magpie, woodpecker, and rook, having all 
 been found with the crossed mandibles of the loxia.( 68 ) Look 
 also at the changes from the wild animals to those domesticated 
 ones which are known to be descended from them. " When 
 the eggs of the wild goose," says Professor Low, " are taken, 
 and the young are supplied with food in unlimited quantity, 
 the result is remarkable. The intestines, and with them the 
 abdomen, become so much enlarged, that the animal nearly 
 loses the power of flight, and the powerful muscles which 
 enabled him in a wild state to take such flights, become feeble 
 from disease, and his long wings are rendered unserviceable. 
 The beautiful bird that outstripped the flight of the eagle, is 
 now a captive without a chain." Another change is the 
 transition from grey to white plumage. In the domestication 
 of the pig, the author last quoted admits that there are reduc- 
 tions of the number of teeth, and variations of the number of 
 the dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and caudal vertebrae, producing 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 137 
 
 differences greater than what are usually regarded as suffi- 
 cient to constitute species. But the most striking observations 
 on this subject are those of M. Roulin, made during a resi- 
 dence of several years in Columbia, relative to the races which 
 had been introduced there in a domesticated state by the 
 early voyagers, and allowed to run wild during the three 
 centuries which have since elapsed. As an example, the hog : 
 " Wandering all day in the woods, this animal has lost nearly 
 all marks of servitude ; its ears have become erect, its head 
 broadened, and raised at the upper part, and its colour has 
 been rendered permanent." It has, in short, returned to a 
 strict resemblance to the wild boar of France. The cow, also, 
 from the cessation of the practice of milking, has lost the 
 abundant flow of milk which is found in her species in 
 Europe : to get milk from her at all, it is necessary that her 
 calf should be left with her. M. Roulin arrived at the fol- 
 lowing conclusions : that animals naturalized in new countries 
 undergo durable changes, bringing their organization into 
 accordance with the climates in which they are destined to 
 live ; and that habits of independence soon make the domestic 
 species resume the characters of the wild species from which 
 they have sprung. We have here, it will be owned, equal 
 proof that the tuskless hog of our farm-yards is the same 
 animal which roams the forest in formidable state and arma- 
 ture, as that the wild boar is the same with the domestic pig. 
 It is difficult, after what we have now seen, to regard the 
 idea of species or specific distinction as descriptive of a fact 
 in nature ; it must be held as merely representing certain 
 appearances presented, perhaps transiently, to our notice. 
 The history of the question seems to be this. Naturalists, 
 starting with a limited fund of observation, mainly, indeed, 
 consisting of the remark which the most superficial observa- 
 tion supplies, that like usually produces like, lay it down as 
 an axiom that species is a determinate thing. In a little time, 
 certain modifiabilities are observed. To maintain the axiom 
 intact, these are called varieties. Afterwards, much greater 
 variabilities are witnessed, even to the dissolution of genera 
 among the cryptogams and cereals, and the community of 
 
138 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 algae and fungi water and land plants. Still, to keep the 
 axiom whole, these are held in doubt, or relegated to a place 
 in the elastic region of the varieties. Such is the stage which 
 we have now attained. But this is a process the reverse of 
 philosophical : it is to start with a theory, and then make 
 facts succumb to it. Were the process reversed and the facts 
 taken first, we should see that a great modifiability exists in 
 organic nature, especially in the humbler departments of the 
 two kingdoms. And seeing that this modifiability presents 
 itself within the scope of a very limited experience, it might 
 safely be inferred that something much greater would be de- 
 tected if our range of experience were extended, especially 
 since the world presents us with results which can only be 
 naturally accounted for in this manner. It is here a fact to 
 be specially remarked, that the greatest variability, the most 
 striking instances of transition or intercommunion of forms, 
 are offered in the lower grades of being. In these depart- 
 ments of nature, generation is rapid and abundant in compa- 
 rison with the reproduction of the higher forms. What 
 requires perhaps a century in the one case (say a series of 
 three generations) will be accomplished in a day in the 
 other. Nothing, therefore, seems more natural than that phe- 
 nomena connected with the reproduction of the higher 
 animals should require a much longer time to be evolved than 
 those connected with the lower. The time may be, in the 
 one case, such as to fall within our range of observation (and 
 this range, as far as scientific accuracy is concerned, is but a 
 day), while in the other case it may be, and indeed, on a just 
 comparison, we should expect it to be, beyond even the whole 
 space of what is called the historical era. Such is precisely 
 the point to which the present theory would lead us. We 
 see that permanency of specific distinctions in the higher or- 
 ganisms would sink, as it has done in so many of the lower, 
 if we had as long a time to observe their reproductive history as 
 would, in embryology, be equivalent to the space of time during 
 which we have observed the humbler creatures. We see this 
 persistency and think it fixed, exactly as men have hitherto 
 seen the solar position in the universe. We advance among 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 139 
 
 the stars at the rate of two millions of millions of miles a year ; 
 but astronomers tell us that it would take ninety millions of 
 years to enable us to pass through the whole, even at this 
 rapid rate. Well, therefore, might the unassisted eye and 
 unexamining intellect presume the place of the solar system to 
 be fixed, for it is evident that no human tradition could 
 record changes indicating the translation. Yet we do pass 
 on to Hercules, although forty centuries failed to remark the 
 circumstance. So may specific distinctions in the higher 
 animals have been changed in the course of the vast periods 
 which geology shows to have elapsed since the commence- 
 ment of organization upon earth, although, during that inap- 
 preciable segment of the great cycle which has passed since 
 man woke to the mysteries of nature, no single transition of 
 the kind might have been observed. The whole case reminds 
 us greatly of the objection which stood against the earth's 
 motion from the days of Aristarchus downwards, that there 
 ought in that case to be an observable parallax. As there 
 was no observable parallax, because the earth's orbit is an in- 
 significant space in comparison with the distance of the stars, 
 so is our observation of animal changes insufficient to show 
 transitions of species in the higher grades of the kingdom, be- 
 cause it is a mere span in comparison with the vast ages 
 actually concerned in the phenomenon. 
 
 A similar principle of explanation applies to the alleged 
 tendency of variety to be obliterated. While it is only to be 
 expected that a single animal showing an originality of form 
 will fail to impress it on its posterity, if it be absorbed in alli- 
 ance with animals possessing no such peculiarities, there is no 
 reason to believe that a variety uniting with a creature like 
 itself will not have descendants of its own character. We 
 judge on this question in the midst of a fully-peopled world; 
 but we must cast back our minds to a time when it was only 
 in the course of being filled with living things. We must 
 think of a time when, for example, over large portions of the 
 surface mountain tracts were rising, perhaps beside low and 
 marshy grounds, or when forests began to spread over exten- 
 sive regions. Here a new field of existence is presented. 
 
140 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 The fecundity of nature has ordained that her creatures shall 
 ever be pressing upon the verge of the local means of subsist-. 
 ence. A colonizing principle accordingly comes into play. 
 On such an occasion, it might be that individual wading 
 birds began to advance into dry grounds and woods, elected 
 to the new life perhaps by some of those varieties of appe- 
 tency which occur in all tribes ; thus exposing themselves to 
 new influences, and ceasing to experience those formerly ope- 
 rating, until, by slow degrees, in the course of a vast space of 
 time, the characters of the pheasant tribes were evoked. ( 69 ) 
 Here, it will be at once perceived, re-absorption of peculiarities 
 was not likely to occur, for the field of colonization, so to speak, 
 was sufficiently wide to allow of the new families wandering 
 farther and farther away from the original grounds and the 
 ancestral tribes, while return was prevented by the full popu- 
 lation continually pressing behind. Altogether, this presents 
 a very different view of varieties from that which is commonly 
 presented, when we see a single peculiar individual standing 
 in the midst of, and necessarily allying itself to, the original 
 stock. The process of variation as a consequence of changed 
 conditions and appetencies being left unchecked, and that for 
 a vast space of time, we obtain at length creatures fixedly 
 peculiar ; that is, however, merely creatures which appear so, 
 because there is no replacing them in the former conditions 
 in this densely-peopled globe, and, though there were, the 
 retrogression to the anterior forms would require a space of 
 time beyond the range of human observation. 
 
 It may now be remarked, that, in this hypothetic variabi- 
 lity, the possibility of re-union may, and in all probability 
 does, depend upon the degree of similarity which still exists 
 in the different individuals, supposing them to be members of 
 the same stirps or line of being, for I believe that no others 
 are capable of intermixture. As has been remarked by a 
 venerable naturalist " Many bulbous roots that have been 
 increased during a long succession of years by offsets, become 
 absolutely incapable of bearing seed ; 'and it is not more 
 strange that plants which in different soils and climates have 
 diverged from the original form of the first created individual, 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 141 
 
 should refuse to bear seed by the one which has departed 
 most widely, and yet produce it readily by another, which 
 still agrees with it in some important points." ( ;0 ) Admit this, 
 and the grand basis of specific distinction, the possibility of 
 intermixture, can no longer be laid hold of. Plants and 
 animals of one line are only to be expected to unite, which, 
 being of one grade of organization, are also sufficiently near 
 to each other in those peculiarities liable to modification from 
 external causes, on which the so-called distinctions of species 
 are grounded. 
 
 The illustrations of our hypothesis are now closed. We 
 have seen that, even judging from short spaces of time, there 
 is a great and incontestable modifiability of organic forms, so 
 great as to have absorbed the presumed distinctions of species 
 in many noted instances. We have seen that this modifi- 
 ability, by some hidden law, immediately obeys external con- 
 ditions. It has also been seen that, though no transition 
 from grade to grade was ever observed to take place, the 
 means and mode by which it could naturally happen are not 
 concealed from us ; they are pictured before our eyes in the 
 metamorphosis of the tadpole, and even practically exem- 
 plified in a narrow degree in the natural history of the bee. 
 It has been shown that no organism is independent, but all 
 stand in a web of intimate relation, undeniably indicating 
 that their origin is one connected phenomenon. It has been 
 seen that the higher animals, when their organization is ex- 
 amined, are only improvements upon the lower advanced 
 forms of the same beings ; and the same holds good regarding 
 plants. In conformity, too, with this gradation of forms, is 
 the succession of the actual animals throughout the geological 
 ages ; a fact most important not merely one calling to be 
 explained, as is at the utmost allowed by men of science of 
 the present day, but one which helps to explain, a piece of 
 actual tangible evidence, and bearing wholly, when taken in 
 connexion with proofs of other kinds, in favour of the 
 natural origin of species. Surely when, in addition to all 
 this, we learn that life is believed by many men of science to 
 spring occasionally, even now, from inorganic elements 
 
142 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 when we find that, moreover, it is generally admitted by that 
 class of men to be in itself a simply natural phenomenon, we 
 cannot but say that at least VESTIGES have been seen of 
 the natural ordinances or arrangements, by which the Al- 
 mighty Father caused this globe (and probably others within 
 our ken) to be overspread with the many creatures whose per- 
 fection is his praise. Rigid proof is not, indeed, attained ; but 
 we have all the evidence which is attainable in the case. It is 
 evidence from various quarters, all perfectly homogeneous ; it 
 harmonizes with everything else which science tells us of the 
 history of the universe ; it supplants a mean with an exalted 
 idea of the Deity, and has nothing opposed to it but the 
 prejudices formed in the nonage of our race. For these 
 reasons, I must, till disproof is offered, regard the theory 
 of Progressive Development as the true explanation of the 
 origin of organic nature. The simplest and most primitive 
 types of being, under a law to which that of like production 
 is subordinate, gave birth to a type superior to it in compo- 
 siteness of organization and endowment of faculties; this 
 again produced the next higher, and so on to the highest. 
 There has been, in short, a universal gestation of nature, 
 analogous to that of the individual being, and attended as 
 little by circumstances of a startling or miraculous kind as 
 the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to 
 another of her pregnancy. We see but the chronicle of one 
 or two great areas, within which the development has reached 
 the highest forms. In some others, as Australia and the 
 islands of the Pacific, development has not yet passed through 
 the whole of its stages, because, owing to the comparatively 
 late uprise of the land, the terrestrial portion of the develop- 
 ment was there commenced more recently. It would com- 
 mence and proceed in any new appropriate area, on this or 
 any other sphere, exactly as it commenced upon our area in 
 the time of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, whichever these 
 are. Nay, it starts every hour with common infusions, and 
 in similar humble theatres, and would there proceed through 
 all the subsequent stages, granting suitable space and con- 
 ditions. Thus simple after ages of marvelling is Organic 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 143 
 
 Creation, while yet the whole phenomena are, in another 
 point of view, wonders of the highest kind, being the un- 
 doubted results of ordinances arguing the highest attributes 
 of foresight, skill, and goodness on the part of their Divine 
 Author. 
 
 Early in this century, M. Lamarck, one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of modern naturalists, suggested that the gradation 
 of animals depended upon some general law which it was 
 important for us to discover. So far he was right ; but the 
 theory which he consequently formed with regard to the 
 causes of the varieties of animated being was so far from 
 being adequate to account for the facts, that it has had scarcely 
 a single adherent. What M. Lamarck chiefly grounded upon 
 was the well-known physiological fact, that use or exercise 
 strengthens and enlarges an organ, while disuse equally 
 atrophies it. He conceived that, an animal being brought 
 into new circumstances, and called upon to accommodate 
 itself to these, the exertions which it consequently made to 
 that effect caused the rise of new parts : on the contrary, 
 when new circumstances left certain existing parts unused, 
 these parts gradually ceased to exist. Something analogous 
 was, he thought, produced in vegetables, by changes in their 
 nutrition, in their absorptions and transpirations, and in the 
 quantity of caloric, light, air, and moisture which they 
 received. This principle, with time, he deemed sufficient to 
 have produced the advance from the monad to the mammal. 
 His illustrations were chiefly of the following nature. The 
 bird which is attracted to the water by the necessity of seek- 
 ing there its food, wishes to move about on the surface of the 
 flood, and for this purpose strikes out its toes. Through the 
 consequent repeated separations of the toes, the skin uniting 
 them at the roots is extended and at length becomes webbed. 
 In like manner, the shore bird which has no desire to swim, 
 but has to approach the water for food, is constantly subject 
 to sink in the mud. The bird, disliking this, exerts all its 
 efforts to lengthen its legs ; the result is, that, by continual 
 habit for many generations, the legs of this order do at length 
 become long and bare, as we see them. The error of the 
 
144 HYPOTHESIS OP THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 theory is in giving this adaptive principle too much to do. 
 What undoubtedly is effectual in modifying the exterior 
 peculiarities of animals was obviously insufficient to account 
 for the great grades of organization. In the present day, we 
 have superior light from geology and physiology, and hence 
 arises my suggestion of a process analogous to ordinary ges- 
 tation for advancing organic life through its grades in the 
 course of a long but definite space of time, with only a 
 recourse to external conditions as a means of producing the 
 exterior characters. It must nevertheless be acknowledged 
 that the germ of this natural view of the history of the world 
 is presented in the work of Lamarck. 
 
 But the idea that any of the lower animals have been con- 
 cerned in any way with the origin of man is not this de- 
 grading ? Degrading is a term expressive of a notion of the 
 human mind, and the human mind is liable to prejudices 
 which prevent its notions from being invariably correct. 
 Were we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances 
 attending the production of an individual of our race, we 
 might equally think them degrading, and be eager to deny 
 them, and exclude them from the admitted truths of nature. 
 Knowing this fact familiarly and beyond contradiction, a 
 healthy and natural mind finds no difficulty in regarding it 
 complacently. So also, on becoming aware of the genetic 
 history of our species, we might expect a rational and well- 
 ordered mind to receive the idea with submission, as a view 
 of the manner in which Divine Providence has been pleased 
 in this instance to work. One source of the prejudice here 
 to be contended with rests in our associations with the word 
 ancestry. From seeing our immediate seniors possessed of 
 venerable qualities, we naturally incline to venerate an an- 
 cestry ; we presume its constituent elements to be something 
 superior to ourselves. When called upon, therefore, to place 
 any of the inferior orders of Being in this relation, a shock 
 unavoidably follows. But here the error lies in transferring 
 our idea of the qualities of a sire or grandsire to a collective 
 ancestry. The elder people of the earth are in reality its 
 children, and we are its true senate. The feeling due to 
 
THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 145 
 
 early generations is the half-pitying benevolence which we 
 daily bestow upon childhood. It follows that the still earlier 
 generations antecedent to the perfection of the human type, 
 ought to be regarded with an extension of this same feeling 
 the modification of it which humane natures daily exemplify 
 in their treatment of the inferior animals. Our children, it 
 may be said, are the representatives of the first simple and 
 impulsive men of the earth : the lower animals represent the 
 earlier pre-human stages of life. The right conception of the 
 case is, that in these stages we are not to look for what is 
 venerable, but, on the contrary, for what is humble and ele- 
 mentary. We are to expect but the primitice of man's mas- 
 terful life something not even ascending to the dignity of 
 " the infant mewling in its nurse's arms." If thus prepared, 
 we should experience no shock on hearing that the human 
 form was preceded genealogically by others of humbler 
 aspect, no more than we are on learning that every indivi- 
 dual amongst us passes through the characters of the inverte- 
 brate, fish, and reptile, before he is permitted to breathe the 
 breath of life. A deep moral principle seems involved in 
 the history of the origin of man. He is the undoubted chief 
 of all creatures, and as such may well have a character and 
 destiny in some respects peculiar and far exalted above the 
 rest ; but it appears that his relation to them is, after all, one 
 of kindred. Along with his authority over them, he bears 
 from nature an obligation to abstain from wantonly injuring 
 them, and as far as possible to cherish and protect them. 
 Good men feel this duty, as if it were a command from a 
 source above themselves. It seems to them, that if the help- 
 lessness of childhood calls for kind and gentle treatment, 
 much more does the essentially weaker character of the dumb 
 creature. And if the innocence of infancy is touching, still 
 more so is the even more harmless character which (over- 
 looking carnivorous instincts implanted in certain families for 
 a wise purpose) attaches to the lower animals. It is common, 
 under the influence of prejudice, to do gross injustice to the 
 characters of these denizens of nature's common. We do not 
 sufficiently reflect on their respectable qualities. Yet we 
 
 L 
 
146 HYPOTHESIS OP THE DEVELOPMENT, ETC. 
 
 must go to the dog for a type of the virtue of fidelity, and to 
 the bee for that of industry. The parental affection of many 
 animals is not below, if it is not considerably above, that of 
 human mothers. Man nowhere exemplifies the virtue of 
 patience in the practical perfection in which we see it in the 
 horse and many other creatures which become the slaves of 
 his convenience. Nowhere does he display that perfect mo- 
 deration in wants. Alas for man's boasted superiority in 
 how many respects does it fail beside the unassuming merits 
 of the mere commonalty of nature ! 
 
147 
 
 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL DIS- 
 TRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 
 
 ALL truth being self-consistent, we might expect that this 
 view of the history of organic nature, if sound, would ac- 
 cord with a just classification of plants and animals, supposing 
 such to exist. It is certainly very desirable that our theory 
 could have been subjected to this test ; but it cannot be, for 
 naturalists are as yet only struggling towards true classifica- 
 tions in both kingdoms. It becomes necessary, nevertheless, 
 that we should make some inquiry into that order which has 
 long been alleged to exist in animated nature, as, if any such 
 thing truly exist, it either must agree with a genealogical 
 system, or become its condemnation. 
 
 The result of my own investigations is, that there is an 
 order in animated nature, but that it has hitherto been much 
 misunderstood both by those who incline to a theory of deve- 
 lopment and others. The former naturally took hold of the 
 idea of gradations, because it generally accorded with the 
 notion of development. They pointed to that " chain of being," 
 or series of ascending forms, which had long been supposed 
 to extend between the animalcule and the human being. It 
 was on the other hand successfully shown that beings did not 
 form " a single and continuous series ;" that it was " impos- 
 sible to place all living animals in such an order that we may 
 
 L2 
 
148 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 always pass from one species to another by following a de- 
 crease in perfection." " On the one hand, there are classes 
 of animals so insulated, that nothing connects them with 
 others." " On the other, there are types of organization 
 which are absolutely indivisible, and of which the most per- 
 fect beings are superior to the mean of another type, while 
 the most imperfect are inferior to it." All this is true : it 
 remained unanswered by the advocates of the development 
 theory ; and such was the position of the question when the 
 earlier editions of the present work made their appearance. 
 But the error actually lay in the original idea of a chain of 
 being. The animal kingdom (and, by consideration of parity, 
 we may presume the vegetable also) consists of a plurality of 
 series going on side by side with each other, but not all to 
 the same point in the scale. No wonder, accordingly, that 
 some appear insulated, or that the highest of some types are 
 superior to the meanest of others, while the most imperfect 
 appear inferior. Nor is this merely a hypothetical view of 
 the animal kingdom. It is clearly pointed to by some of the 
 most interesting discoveries in embryology. It is supported 
 by several important considerations regarding the general cha- 
 racters of particular series. It likewise harmonizes with that 
 order of fossils, which I have ventured to describe as not 
 something calling in itself for explanation, but a fact which 
 we may look to as one of the means of explaining something 
 else the whole history of organization upon earth. Finally, 
 such reformation as this new view calls for in our classifica- 
 tions, is accordant in its general demands with all those re- 
 cently effected by the greatest naturalists, by which external 
 and comparatively accidental characters are overlooked, and 
 only the more essential affinities regarded. If it goes beyond 
 the march of living naturalists, it goes in the direction in 
 which they are going, and over ground, to which I believe 
 they must quickly come, whether they adopt a genealogical 
 view of the organic world or not. 
 
 The divisions of the animal kingdom, as we find it in 
 Cuvier, are partly into grades, with a regard to dignity of 
 organization first into Vertebrata (having an internal skele- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 149 
 
 ton) and Invertebrata, and afterwards into such divisions as 
 these of the vertebrata, namely, Mammalia, Birds, Reptiles, 
 Fishes. In these grades are comprehended animals of very 
 various character, animals which only agree in this particular 
 of a community of grade or rank. But other divisions in the 
 common classifications are into groups or series of animals 
 closely allied to each other in form and of one general cha- 
 racter, as, for example, the cephalopoda, the echinodermata, 
 the Crustacea. The one kind of division may be said to be 
 transverse, the other longitudinal. Such a diversity gives 
 rise to a suspicion that there is something wrong, something 
 out of accordance with nature. And so it is. The true 
 fundamental divisions are entirely of the latter kind longi- 
 tudinal ; there only do we find persistence of characters ; the 
 other so-called divisions are only the marks of stages which 
 the true divisions, the Stirpes of being, have reached in their 
 respective courses. It is nevertheless necessary, in the mean- 
 time, to keep the existing classification in view, and to use 
 its language, in order that my own views may be intelligible. 
 
 Cuvier divided the Invertebrata into three great masses, 
 the Radiata, the Articulata, and Mollusca. Of these the tw 
 last appear as co-ordinate, though distinct from each other ; 
 while the Radiata, again, may, excepting one class, be con- 
 sidered as forming a kind of basis for the whole kingdom. 
 
 The RADIATA are all of them animals of exceedingly simple 
 structure, mostly inhabitants of the waters, many of them pro- 
 pagating not by ova, but by division of their bodies, or by the 
 throwing out of little bud-like excrescences. In this lower 
 region are comprehended the Infusory animalcules, Internal 
 Parasites (Entozoa), Sponges, Polyps, Sea-nettles (Acalephcz), 
 and some other obscure classes. Some of these appear to be 
 distinct and independent series, which advance no further ; 
 such, in particular, are the internal parasites, which necessarily 
 do not pass to any higher grade, because they have no sphere 
 for further development. Others form the roots, as it were, 
 of higher families. 
 
 There are two admitted methods of investigating the affi- 
 nities of beings. One is to observe the connexion between the 
 
150 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 forms of the mature organisms ; another is to examine the 
 embryotic progress, and watch the succession of forms there 
 presented. It has for some time been ascertained that no 
 animal, in the course of its development, passes through the 
 forms of all the animals meaner than itself. For example, the 
 sea-nettle is at one time like the monad, an infusory animal- 
 cule, and then like the polyp; the mollusk is successively 
 like the monad and polyp, but never like the sea-nettle. The 
 articulate animal, again, is never like the polyp or sea-nettle, 
 but proceeds at once from the monad form to that of the 
 worm. This Professor Owen calls being " obedient to the 
 law of unity of organization only in its monad stage." ( 7l ) The 
 fact has been held as a difficulty in the way of the doctrine of 
 unity ; but perhaps it is only one of the same nature with 
 that intimated regarding the assumed scale of being. I see 
 animals classed by their affinities in distinct lines, or series, 
 which I regard as stirpes or races. I would therefore expect 
 the unity of organization to be liable to some such limitation 
 as Mr. Owen points out. Is it not, in reality, that each stirps 
 has a unity of organization for itself, or, in other words, that 
 there is such a unity only as far as each particular series of 
 animals is concerned ? These breaks in unity and the breaks 
 in the chain of being are but one thing : they are only dis- 
 turbances to our preconceived ideas, not to a true view of 
 nature drawn from its realities. 
 
 I shall not attempt to place all these obscure animals in 
 genealogical series. The state of zoological science demands 
 that such an effort should be postponed for several years to 
 come. Let us limit our attention to one class, the Echino- 
 dermata, or star-fishes, which are perhaps improperly ranked 
 with other Radiata, seeing that their character is so much 
 superior. In general highly organized, and enjoying free 
 movement at the bottom of the sea, these animals are signally 
 destructive. Admitted to be in their lower forms intimately 
 allied to the Polyps, they probably start in some portion of 
 that extensive order. In their own class, however, as far as 
 traceable backwards, they commence with the encrinus or 
 stone-lily, a group of animals of which we have seen many 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 151 
 
 varieties flourishing in the early seas, but which are now 
 nearly extinct. The creature consisted of a stomach and 
 arms, surrounded by long tentacles or arms, placed upon the 
 top of a stalk fixed to the sea-bottom, the whole being com- 
 posed of numberless minute calcareous plates, connected by 
 gelatinous substance. In more advanced forms of the same 
 order, (as the comatula and the extinct marsupite), the body 
 and arms desert the stalk, and betake themselves to a free- 
 swimming life ; but, as has been elsewhere mentioned, the 
 young comatula lives for a time as an encrinus ; that is, upon 
 a stalk. Seeing that the same animal, in an earlier embryotic 
 stage, represents a polypidom, we conclude that in the poly- 
 piaria is the origin of the echinodermatous line : it is first the 
 polypidom, then the encrinus, then the free-swimming coma- 
 tula, or feather star, the last being one of the most graceful 
 animals in existence. In the higher genera of the latter 
 family, the tentacles are shortened and reduced in number. In 
 the Ophiurce, there are only five long and simple rays pro- 
 jecting from the central body. Afterwards, in the Asteriada, 
 or true star- fishes, the central part dilates step by step, until 
 it fills up the interstices between the rays, and the form be- 
 comes a pentagonal disk. From this there is a clear passage 
 to the Echinus or sea urchin, which is merely a spheroidal 
 animal in a calcareous case, through which numberless spines 
 or tentacles project, for locomotion and the collection of food. 
 This form again becomes elongated into the cylindrical soft- 
 bodied Holothuria, with a circle of tentacles at the oral ex- 
 tremity ; thence the transition is easy to the genus Fistu- 
 laridcs, animals externally worm-like, and possessing the 
 rudiment of a heart, with red blood in the arteries, so that, in 
 this last echinoderm, we may be said to have come nearly, if 
 not fully abreast with, the annelides, and to be approximating 
 to some of the humbler fishes. ( 72 ) The reader cannot fail to 
 have been struck by the great number of forms passed through 
 in this line, in comparison with any other, before leaving the 
 radiate sub-kingdom ; but, in reality, the echinodermata, 
 though of radiated form, are much superior to the rest of that 
 division in their organization, which is, if not complicated in 
 
152 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 the usual sense of naturalists, full of extremely curious minute 
 work. Their whole destiny seems to be of a high kind, for in 
 the stone record their line of forms stands parallel with others 
 in which the whole of the three lowest sub-kingdoms are 
 passed through. Polypiarian animals and encrinites appear 
 in the Silurian and many subsequent formations; at the 
 commencement of the carbonigenous era, the latter are so 
 abundant that we walk over large tracts of country, where 
 the rocks beneath our feet are almost wholly composed of 
 their remains. The Asteriadae appear in the upper Silurians, 
 and are but faintly seen until the Lias, when they become 
 conspicuous. In the Oolite, the Echinidae make their ap- 
 pearance. These are the last which we could expect to be 
 preserved in rocks, as the higher families possess no hard 
 parts ; otherwise, we might perhaps have seen the succession 
 of this class of fossils continued into the holothurise and 
 fistularidae. It cannot fail to be noticed how well the pro- 
 gression of forms agrees with the order of their appearance in 
 the geological ages. 
 
 The ground is now cleared for the two grand series of in- 
 vertebrate animals, and first of the ARTICULATA. These are 
 generally describable as animals " composed of a succession of 
 rings, formed by the skin or outward integument, which from 
 its hardness constitutes a kind of external skeleton ;" one 
 class, however, the Annelides, have no hard investment. The 
 pedigree of the Articulata is very brief. The embryo in most 
 classes passes at once from the monad to the worm form, and 
 then the articulate character is assumed. It can therefore 
 scarcely be said that the radiate sub-kingdom comes before 
 the articulate, though the one is lower in organization than 
 the other. There is indeed reason to believe that the great 
 classes of the Articulata are distinct stirpes, the commence- 
 ment of each of which is little more than a step from the in- 
 organic form of matter. This may seem inconsistent with 
 the maxim Natura per saltum nihil agit; but maxims must 
 be obedient to facts, not facts to maxims, and we may deem 
 that a leap which in reality is none. 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 153 
 
 The necessity of taking liberal views of the procedure of 
 nature in the development of the organic world, is im- 
 pressed upon us by a character found in the very first 
 order of the articulata to which our attention is called. That 
 the Annelides (worms) are the humblest of the articulate 
 animals there is now no doubt ; yet, unlike their superiors, 
 almost all of them have red blood, a feature of the highest 
 sub-kingdom. Four leading forms in this class are described. 
 Of the Tubicolida, or those inhabiting tubes, the serpula is 
 an example. It forms for its habitation, usually upon some 
 sea-immersed stone, an irregularly twisted calcareous tube, 
 out of which it presents, floating in the water, a fan-like 
 branchial apparatus of beautiful colours. The second order, 
 Suctoria, is represented by the well-known leech ; the third 
 by the earth-worm ; the fourth by the sea- mouse (aphrodita). 
 In all of these groups, we see distinct advances in organiza- 
 tion, and this is traceable in some in an interesting confor- 
 mity with changes of scene and mode of life, from fixed situa- 
 tions to free movement in the sea, from thence to the shore, 
 and thence again to the land. From the iJfais, a simple 
 marine worm which at the recess of tide burrows in the sand, 
 there is a clear passage to the common earth-worm, which 
 adopts a similar retreat on land, and comes to the surface 
 when rain is falling. The fourth order, Dorsibranchiato, so 
 called because of gill tufts ranged along the back, have an 
 equally clear affinity, implying ancestral relationship to cer- 
 tain land animals, which, however, naturalists at present 
 regard as an independent class. The nereis, a well known 
 dorsibranchiate, is an animal of great length, composed of a 
 consecutive series of rings, each having a couple of processes 
 at each side, which are used as oars for propelling the body 
 through the water. One species is four feet long, and consists 
 of several hundred segments. By conversion of the water- 
 breathing apparatus into one fitted for aerial respiration, an 
 increase of firmness and density to the external integument, 
 and the development of a couple of limbs for each ring of the 
 body, we see the nereis, as it were, transmuted into the 
 
154 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Myriapod.C 3 } Here, however, there may be more than one 
 line of passage ; for the two great families of the myriapods, 
 the Julidse and Scolopendridse, are diverse in character, the 
 former being vegetable feeders, the latter carnivorous, and it 
 appears as a rule in the genetic system, that true carnivores 
 are always apart. Confining our view to the Scolopendridae, 
 we see a remarkable continuity of character and habits 
 transmitted to them from the presumed marine ancestor, 
 (nereis,) allowing for the altered medium of existence. The 
 scolopendra is an animal furnished with powerful destructive 
 organs ; and, living under stones and the bark of trees, and in 
 fissures generally, it is his custom to wind insidiously along, 
 and dart upon any little animal which comes in his way. Of 
 the nereides, on the other hand, we are told that they 
 " usually live in the excavations of littoral rocks, in the hol- 
 lows of sponges, in the interstices of the radicles of thalas- 
 siophytes, under stones, and in general in all bodies which 
 present fissures more or less profound . . . They all ap- 
 pear to feed upon animal substances. . . M. Bosc tells us 
 they live upon polypi and small worms, on which they throw 
 themselves, by darting the anterior part of their body, which 
 they have first contracted." 
 
 The next articulate class demanding attention is the Crus- 
 tacea, animals in which the annular sections are covered with 
 a calcareous shell, and provided with jointed limbs, the respi- 
 ratory apparatus being branchial ; all are aquatic, except 
 some of the higher genera, which occasionally adventure upon 
 the land. They are in two great groups, entomostraca and 
 malacostraca, the former being the simpler, and exclusively 
 marine. Emmerich considers the Trilobites which figure so 
 conspicuously in the early rocks, as between the two divi- 
 sions, but most nearly allied to the first ; whence it would 
 appear that the Crustacea which make so early an appearance 
 in the rock series, are humble animals, only preceded in their 
 own sub-kingdom by a group, which, from their slight forms, 
 might be ill-adapted for preservation in strata exposed after 
 deposition to a high temperature. The .geological history of 
 the Crustacea tallies in other points with their gradation. In 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 155 
 
 the triassic epoch come the Macruri, which prevail to the 
 present time ; afterwards, in the tertiary era, come the 
 Brachyura. These are the fossil orders which have been best 
 studied, and it is M. Agassiz who remarks " they succeed 
 each other in the series of formations in the order of their 
 organic gradation." The same naturalist remarks " the inti- 
 mate analogy between these different types and the phases of the 
 embryonic development of the Crustacea, which MM. Rathke 
 and Erdl have afforded us the means of becoming acquainted 
 with." As elsewhere remarked, the young of the decapoda 
 are of the entomostracous form, and thus denote a passage of 
 the one from the other. 
 
 In one family of the Crustacea, there is a striking illustra- 
 tion of what I regard as the true history of species. This 
 is the family to which the well-known hermit-crab belong 
 (Paguri,) distributed extensively in the tropical American 
 islands, and upon our own coasts. Animals of this kind live 
 in molluscan shells deserted by their proper tenants. They 
 select one at the first for their residence, and afterwards, as 
 they increase in size, they remove to larger ones. With 
 the hind part of the body inserted in the hollow shell, they 
 present the head and feet outwards. They move about in 
 the shallow water, upon the shore, and even upon dry land, 
 with great freedom, dragging their adopted mansion after 
 them. A very slight examination of these animals shows 
 that they are adapted by special peculiarities for this kind of 
 life. In the common British hermit crab, the third and 
 fourth pairs of locomotive limbs are of small size, being 
 buried wholly within the shell, where they are applied to 
 the columellar fold, as a means of fastening the animal in the 
 recess. Farther in, and also employed in fastening the body 
 to the shell, is the caudal part, with two holders developed for 
 this express purpose, and as rough as a file. The hold is still 
 further secured in some species by rows of suckers along the 
 abdomen. Add to all this, that, for want of room at the 
 mouth of the shell, only one of the pincer claws is well deve- 
 loped, usually the right, while only the two front pairs of feet 
 are used for locomotion, and we see that, whether we take 
 
156 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 these crabs as a species, a genus, or a family, their ordinary 
 form that thing which naturalists regard as immutable, and 
 as originally the effect of a special creative effort is in direct 
 relation to the existence and forms of turbinate shells for- 
 merly possessed by a different class of animals, which must 
 therefore have existed before the hermit crabs. Now mark 
 the credulity to which the adherents of immutability must 
 here be reduced. They must believe that the Creator, having 
 a particular regard to the fact of molluscan shells lying use- 
 less on the shore, formed, by special care or fiat, a family of 
 crabs to occupy them. They must believe that the rough- 
 ness of the caudal appendages, the development of suckers 
 along the abdomen, the reduction of the two hind pairs of 
 limbs, and the left pincer claw, were all subjects for 
 this special care, and were beyond the power of what an 
 eminent geologist calls " vulgar nature." Surely the Deus 
 ex machind was never more remarkably exemplified. See, on 
 the other hand, how these facts are accounted for on the 
 development theory. According to this new light, the 
 hermit crabs are simply a portion of some greater section of 
 the crustacean class. Their peculiarities are modifications 
 from the parent form, brought about in the course of genera- 
 tions, in consequence of an appetency which had led these 
 creatures to seek a kind of shelter in turbinate shells. They 
 are as truly creatures of the Great God, as if they had been 
 made in the manner of a human artist modelling a figure. 
 But the means were inherent natural forces in the constitu- 
 tion of the original tribe, tending, in generation, to accommo- 
 date organic form to physical circumstances. 
 
 The next class in general rank is the Insecta, a wonderfully 
 varied group, yet all agreeing in having thirteen segments 
 and three pairs of legs ; all, moreover, respiring by means of 
 tracheae or tubes permeating the body, an arrangement 
 having reference to their peculiar mode of locomotion, which, 
 in the majority of species, is by flight through the air. The 
 fact of the greater number of insect genera passing, in their 
 larva state, through the annelidan or myriapodous form, 
 points to these classes as their genetic origin ; yet this is a 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 157 
 
 point on which the benefit of further investigation is desir- 
 able. In the case of the Arachnida (mites and spiders), the 
 highest articulate class, no humbler form is traceable in the 
 embryo ; it is therefore impossible to assign them any pedi- 
 gree. Can it be possible that the arachnida, or these with 
 the insecta, have sprung almost or wholly at once from inor- 
 ganic elements under the proper electric influences? On 
 this subject, we are quite unprepared to make any positive 
 affirmation ; but it certainly is remarkable that in no depart- 
 ment of the animal kingdom, besides the infusoria and 
 entozoa, have there been more frequent appearances of an 
 aboriginal commencement of life than in the insecta. The 
 acarus so often produced from certain solutions, where ova 
 were rigidly excluded, is a lowly member of the arachnida. 
 
 We now come to the MOLLUSCA, a portion of the animal 
 kingdom, the importance of which, in point of numbers and 
 the part they play in creation, none but students of zoology 
 could fully appreciate. The infinite variety of bivalve and 
 univalve shells presented upon our own coasts and brought 
 from all parts of the world, will convey some idea of the mul- 
 titude of forms comprehended under this sub-kingdom. The 
 whole mass is after all resolvable into three divisions ; one of 
 them comprising headless mollusks in bivalve shells ; the other 
 two, headed mollusks in univalve shells (some, however, of 
 all the three divisions being naked). The whole sub-kingdom 
 appear to have a very brief genesis in the radiata, the only 
 preceding forms in embryo being the infusorial and polypian. 
 Here, too, as in the Articulata, we find that we must start at 
 a point very near the fountain-head of organic existence. 
 
 In the headless division, naturalists place three sub-divi- 
 sions, called by them classes, in the following rank, according 
 to ascending grade of organization Tunicata, Brachiopoda, 
 and Lamellibranchiata. The two latter are the shell-fish of 
 popular observation, headless, and mostly sessile, or destined 
 to spend their lives in fixed positions. The Tunicata are 
 similar in all essential respects, except in being of humbler 
 organization, an inclosed, not in shells, but in a cartilaginous 
 or coriaceous integument ; whence their name. It thus ap- 
 
158 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 pears that the Brachiopoda, which are the predominant fossils 
 of the Lower Silurian era, are the first animals we meet with 
 in this line, having parts capable of commemorating their ex- 
 istence. While the Brachiopoda are generally inhabitants of 
 deep seas, the Lamellibranchiata, among which are included 
 the oyster, muscle, and other testacea, affect the beds of shal- 
 low seas, whence they spread in a variety of genera, towards 
 shores, the mouths of rivers, and into fresh water. The 
 Lamellibranchiates are higher than the preceding class ; they 
 are the first bivalves which possess a true hinge. It is also 
 remarkable that, with the decline of the brachiopods, at an 
 early point in the secondary formation, rises the lamellibran- 
 chiate class. There is here, therefore, an improvement in 
 organization, an advance in habitat landward, and a succession 
 of existence in the geological ages, all in harmonious connec- 
 tion. NOT is this all. The lamellibranchiata are again di- 
 visible into monomyaria arid dimyaria, the former having one 
 adductor muscle, and the latter two ; the former, moreover, 
 being intermediate between the brachiopods and dimyaria in 
 respect of non-symmetrical form. Now the monomyaria 
 succeed the brachiopods as an abundant and predominating 
 form, and are succeeded again, in that respect, by the 
 dimyaria. This beautiful harmony between the fossil history 
 of the acephalous mollusks and their order in progressive 
 organization is expressly declared by M. Agassiz. 
 
 The three highest molluscan classes, univalved, possessing 
 heads, and with hardly an exception destined for independent 
 locomotion, stand apart from the bivalve orders; generally 
 superior in organization, as beseems their higher destiny, but 
 not on that account to be held as an advanced form in the 
 same genealogy. The lowest univalve class called Pteropoda, 
 from their mode of progression by a couple of wing-like 
 membranes projecting from the neck may be described as 
 marine slugs, generally of small size, many of them naked, 
 others protected by a very delicate shell, which swim through 
 the ocean in vast multitudes ; one species (clio) being in such 
 abundance in the circumpolar ocean as to form the chief food 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 159 
 
 of the whale. Professor Edward Forbes expresses his opinion 
 that the larva of the pteropod will yet most likely be found 
 to resemble an ascidian polype ; inferring a very brief descent 
 from the starting-point of life in its class. 
 
 The Gasteropoda & class of many families and genera, 
 including limpets, whelks, cowries, snails, etc. have compa- 
 ratively a high organization, the nervous system more con- 
 centrated, the nutritive more elaborate, but yet are of slug- 
 gish habits, usually moving by alternate contractions and ex- 
 pansions of a fleshy disk placed upon their stomachs ; hence 
 the name of the class. Many of the gasteropods are naked, 
 others possessed of but slender protection. A large propor- 
 tion are vegetable feeders, the marine species battening upon 
 sea- weed, the terrestrial species upon herbage and fruit ; the 
 rest are flesh-eaters, but the general character of the Gas- 
 teropoda as a class is harmless, like that of the herbivorous 
 mammalia. A clear gradation of forms passes through some 
 of the families, from the simple cone of the limpet to the 
 spiral of the snail. The descent of the class appears to be 
 from some families of the preceding ; for " they all," says a 
 minute observer of nature, ( 74 ) " commence life under the same 
 form, both of shell and animal ; namely, a very simple spiral, 
 helicoid shell, and an animal furnished with two ciliated 
 wings or lobes, by w r hich it can swim freely through the fluid 
 in which it is contained. At this stage of the animal's exist- 
 ence, it corresponds to the permanent state of a Pteropod." 
 
 In the univalve mollusks, as in the bivalves, it clearly 
 appears that the humblest families are destined to a fixed 
 place in the depths of the ocean. As we advance through the 
 higher groups, we find, in parallel steps with an improvement 
 in the organs of animal life (for example, the splitting of the 
 sexes into different individuals), an advance in the sphere of 
 existence, to a life on the surface of the ocean, to fresh water, 
 and even to dry land. The humble Helicidce (snails) a 
 family of the Gasteropoda, are the first animals which we en- 
 counter as adventuring upon the firm surface of the globe. 
 And it is interesting to remark, in this progression, the 
 
160 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 requisite change in the mode of respiration namely, from 
 branchiae, the apparatus necessary in aquatic life, to a vas- 
 cular air-sac, the first form of lungs the proper breathing 
 organ of terrestrial animals. 
 
 In the peculiarly destructive Cephalopoda, we recognise 
 the highest organization of which the molluscan form appears 
 capable ; it includes the orthoceratites, ammonites, belemnites, 
 etc. of the rock systems, and the nautilus and cuttlefish of the 
 present era. Their descent is probably from the carnivorous 
 families of the pteropoda ; for " the nucleus of their shells," 
 says the naturalist last quoted, " is a spiral univalve, similar 
 in form to the undeveloped shells above alluded to [those of 
 the embryo gasteropods] ; and it is yet to be seen whether 
 all cephalopoda do not commence their existence under a 
 spiral-shelled f>teropodous form." It has also been remarked, 
 that " the shells of two species [of pteropoda] afford indica- 
 tions of a transition towards the cephalopoda ; one resembling 
 in its straight conical form the belemnite and many other ex- 
 tinct genera of that class, and the other having a partially 
 formed chamber at the lower closed extremity ; and similar 
 evidence is afforded by their internal structure." ( 75 ) This ge- 
 nealogy, if it shall be affirmed, will afford an important 
 illustration of the geological history, because it will show that 
 cephalopoda might be expected to make their appearance as 
 early in the rock series as any other mollusks possessing parts 
 equally fitted to commemorate their existence. These ani- 
 mals are to be supposed as an ultimate form, reached, not 
 through the medium of all the lower molluscan orders, but 
 only of one, and with respect to that one, it so happens that, 
 though possessing hard parts of such delicacy as to have little 
 chance of preservation, relics of it have been discovered as far 
 down as any cephalopodous remains.( 76 ) This contemporaneity 
 of the cephalopoda with the gasteropods and brachiopods, it 
 may be remarked, would be in harmony with what we know 
 of the economy of nature with respect to the destructive ani- 
 mals. They seem to bear a relation to those upon which 
 they are destined to prey, and to be a necessary accompani- 
 ment to them. Hence they would require to be upon a diffe- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 161 
 
 rent genetic line which actually appears, in every advance 
 of the animal kingdom, to be the case and developed con- 
 temporaneously with the weaker tribes, the fertility of which 
 would otherwise produce complete anarchy. Granting, then, 
 this pedigree for the cephalopoda, it would be no anomaly in 
 our theory, although remains of inferior mollusks should 
 never be found lower down in any part of the earth. 
 
 The cephalopods, though so highly organized in comparison 
 with the gasteropods, do not advance, like these, to land forms, 
 with apparatus for aerial respiration. They are, as a class, 
 restricted to a pelagic life, admitting of occasional appear- 
 ances on the surface of the ocean. Their respiratory system 
 is accordingly branchiate, yet with marks of grade which are 
 worthy of observation. It is, in the words of Professor Owen, 
 a law determining animal rank, that " increased number [of 
 parts] irrespective of correlative structure, in an organ of the 
 animal body, is ever a mark of its inferiority." By this test, the 
 nautilus, with its four branchiae, sinks below the belemnite and 
 the cuttle-fish with only two ; and such is the basis of a divi- 
 sion of the cephalopoda. In the whole of this order, however, 
 there is a remarkable advance of the nervous system, though 
 only to the effect of enabling the animal to supply itself with 
 food by conquest over the inferior tribes. The nervous 
 centres, which in lower mollusca were only protected by 
 coverings which also served to cover the rest of the body, 
 now become of sufficient importance to have a special protec- 
 tion, in the form of cartilaginous plates, which naturalists 
 interpret as the rudiment of an internal skeleton. In this 
 way, the cephalopoda approach the borders of the vertebrate 
 sub-kingdom. 
 
 This remarkable class of animals affords in its details some 
 evidences in favour of the development theory. The humble 
 form of a straight or slightly curved shell prevails in the 
 earlier ages. Curved shells increase afterwards. There are 
 also tolerably distinct appearances of a transition of forms in 
 the genera of clymenia, goniatite, and ceratite, which make 
 their appearance in this succession in the rock formations. 
 
162 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 The dibranchiate belemnites commence 
 
 in the oolitic epoch, ushering in the jD 
 
 sepise, the highest of all the cephalopo- ^ 
 
 dous orders, and which have since con- o ^ 
 
 tinued to exist. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that, in the | 
 
 succession of rocks, the forms of the -f. 
 
 cephalopoda change much more abruptly 
 
 than appears to be the case with other rt 
 
 less organized mollusca ; that is, there jj 
 
 are more Decided as well as more fre- .2 
 quent examples of what geologists call 
 
 change of species in this class than in 
 
 others. This is only one of the many =g ^ 
 
 proofs of law in these phenomena. On e 
 
 the theory of interferences, why should 
 
 there be entire renewals of some sets w 
 
 of animals and not of others? On | .2 
 
 the theory of law, we only see each -i 
 
 line of organic being undergoing the 
 
 modifications appropriate to its special * 
 
 constitution, in connexion with the effi- g, | | | 
 
 cacyupon that constitution of external | | !~<i| 
 
 conditions. g H cq 
 
 When we consider the Invertebrate 
 
 animals in this arrangement, the advances o -3 -2 
 
 made in portions of the Animal Kingdom | | | 
 
 before the end of the Silurian era, appear | g ^ ^ 
 in a very different light from what they 
 
 do while we entertain the erroneous no- | . 
 
 tion that there is but one chain of being. & R J- | 
 
 The annexed tabular view will make this ~ & ^ 
 
 readily and abundantly plain. Those ani- o 
 mals which, though hypothetically con- % 
 
 cerned in the genealogy, are not actually t* % 
 
 found in a fossil state, but for whose non- g | d 
 
 appearance as fossils reasons are given, ^ d ^ 
 are expressed in italics. 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF OBGANISMS. 163 
 
 In looking among the animals of one class for the point 
 of connexion by which it is joined to the next above, we 
 must not invariably expect to find what we are wanting in 
 the highest species, for these are often the heads of branches. 
 On the contrary, it appears, in many instances, in the lower 
 species. And this is the more worthy of being pointed out, 
 as the supposition of something different has supplied many 
 of the stumbling blocks of the development theory. In all 
 the classes, for instance, which have terrestrial as well as 
 marine species, the nexus to the next grade of being is among 
 the latter, which are invariably the inferior. And thus it is 
 that no transition of the kind here under our attention that 
 is, none of the greater grade transitions takes place out of 
 the aquatic medium which I have regarded as analogous to 
 that of all individual embryos. 
 
 We now proceed into the Vertebrata, of which the fishes 
 compose the lowest class. Here, with a skeleton, we have 
 red blood and a double chambered heart ; but the blood is 
 still cold, and the respiratory system is by branchiae, the 
 animals being wholly designed for aquatic existence. 
 
 Of the transitions or transmutations implied by the deve- 
 lopment theory, the greatest, or most violent, are those few 
 which took place in the passage from the invertebrate animals 
 to fishes, from fishes to reptiles, and from these to the higher 
 classes. This we might expect, as at such points the pheno- 
 menon had nothing to do with external circumstances, but 
 wholly depended on the internal development force, each 
 stage being one of that limited number of periods, into which 
 the long enduring gestation of nature was divided. Here, 
 accordingly, we shall always find the affinities less distinct 
 than elsewhere ; and yet at all of them some connexions are 
 visible, leaving the general fact of the transition indubitable. 
 
 Between the invertebrate animals and the fishes, the junc- 
 tion is tolerably clear at one point. This is where the cepha- 
 lopodous mollusks connect with such fishes as the myxine, 
 or hag, and the lamprey. These fishes are worm-like in 
 shape, with only a rudimental skeleton in the form of a horny 
 or gelatinous cord. They have a suctorial leech-like mouth, 
 
 M2 
 
164 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 with numerous small teeth, by which they fasten upon living 
 animals for sustenance. The affinity to the cephalopods is 
 fully admitted. It is seen in the nature of the skeleton, so 
 like that of the belemnite, in the character of the investing 
 skin which ejects a copious secretion whenever the animal 
 considers itself in danger, in the power of respiring through 
 the gill apertures without any dependence for that function 
 on the mouth, and in the eight free filaments seen in some 
 species extending forward from around the mouth," repre- 
 senting," as Professor Owen remarks, " the eight ordinary 
 arms of the Cephalopoda Dibranchiata, but arrested in their 
 development by reason of the preponderating size of the caudal 
 extremity of the body, which now [that is, in the fish] forms 
 the sole organ of locomotion." The lancelot, one of this 
 family, is so extremely humble in organization, that Pallas 
 mistook it for a limax (a gasteropodous mollusk), and it has 
 only of late been finally established among the fishes. Some 
 difficulty has been experienced in seeing true affinity between 
 the bag-like figure of the mollusk and the cylindrical elon- 
 gated form of the fish ; but it has been suggested that the mol- 
 lusk is, as it were, the fish doubled in or inverted upon itself: 
 hence the end of the alimentary canal so near to the mouth. 
 The inversion reversed or undone, makes the fish. These 
 appearances of propinquity are most arresting. If they do 
 not indicate genealogical connexion, how should we account 
 for them ? On any other supposition, how should such 
 peculiarities of organization be seen exactly at this point in 
 the animal scale? The fishes here spoken of are not dis- 
 covered in a fossil state. For this their want of hard parts 
 unfitted them ; but they are classed with the Chondroptergii, 
 or cartilaginous fishes, which, we have seen, are amongst the 
 first found in the ascending series of rocks. The affinity and 
 the geological succession, are therefore in perfect harmony. 
 It is here important to remark the progress from entirely soft 
 animals, to an order bearing cartilaginous plates to protect a 
 rudimental brain ; from these, again, to an order having a 
 skull and vertebral column of cartilage ; a series of advances 
 entirely conformable to phenomena seen in individual deve- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 165 
 
 lopment. Nor is it to be overlooked that the presumed pro- 
 geny exhibit, in their voracious character, and the functions 
 they serve in nature, a perfect family likeness to their an- 
 cestry. The cartilaginous fishes were the chief police for 
 keeping down the redundant life of the Devonian and Carbo- 
 niferous seas, as the cephalopoda had been during the Lower 
 and partly also during the Upper Silurian eras. 
 
 The approach made by the annelides to some of the humbler 
 forms of fish indicates another passage from the invertebrate 
 into the vertebrate animals ; and this passage may have taken 
 place in the Upper Silurian or Devonian era, for annelides 
 are ascertained to have previously existed. Perhaps some of 
 the less destructive of the early cartilagines the Lepidoids 
 were such an inoffensive family have had such an origin. 
 
 It might be suggested, as an inquiry worthy of the attention 
 of zoologists, whether the echinodermal line has not given rise 
 to the more recently developed fish families, those which 
 enter upon the field hi the cretaceous era. If the fistularidae 
 make, as appears, so near an approximation to the lowest 
 bearers of the vertebratal type, it is not easy to see how any 
 preconceived ideas regarding the order of sub-kingdoms to be 
 passed through should stand in the way, especially after so 
 many traces of similar irregularity. The geological history 
 of the animals in question is favourable to the conjecture, for 
 the echinoderms are amongst the most conspicuous and im- 
 portant forms antecedent to the chalk era. Looking, indeed, 
 at the enormous abundance of crinoidea in the carboniferous 
 rocks, one can hardly avoid the idea that this peculiar form 
 was destined for some important ultimate history. It might 
 be suggested that the orders by which the fish class is thus 
 entered are those placed by Cuvier at the bottom of the osseous 
 fishes, the Lophobranchii and Plectognathi, which indicate 
 their nearness to the invertebrate type by many features 
 attaching to some or all of them, as imperfection and slow 
 hardening of the skeleton, deficiency of ribs and fins, low 
 and embryotic forms of mouth, dentition, and gills ; the Lo- 
 phobranchi, moreover, hatching their young in a pouch below 
 
166 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 the tail, after the manner of a family of animals equally low 
 in the mammalia. 
 
 In the present state of this inquiry, it is impossible to give 
 an entire genealogical tree of Being. Much must remain 
 obscure and unindicated. Even of what is set forth, some 
 parts must be held liable to correction under better light. 
 Enough, however, is done for the present object, if such 
 fragments of the great composite chain be shown, as afford 
 proof that there is such a thing in nature, and that the idea 
 of genetic succession of advancing forms is in harmony with 
 it. In the Fishes, we have one of the obscurer portions of the 
 animal kingdom. The classifications of Cuvier and Agassiz 
 are neither of them admitted to be natural ; it is therefore 
 not to be expected that any general student should be able to 
 display the class in all its genetic relations, however confident 
 he may be, from what he sees elsewhere, that such relations 
 exist. We find, however, three advances made to its lower 
 confines from the invertebrata namely, by the cephalopodous 
 mollusks, by the annulose animals (annelides), and by the 
 echinodermata. And we see advances made in its upper 
 confines to the next higher class, the REPTILIA, which suc- 
 ceed it in the strata and chronology of the earth, as in orga- 
 nization. 
 
 It is also sufficiently clear, that the succession of fishes 
 upon our globe was in conformity with the embryonic deve- 
 lopment of the individual fish of a high order. This has been 
 denied ; but against all inferior authorities that of M. Agassiz 
 must on such a point be held incontestable. He expressly 
 affirms it as proved "that the embryo of a fish during its deve- 
 lopment, the class of living fishes in its numerous families, and 
 the fish type in its planetary history, in every respect go through 
 analogous phases" The want of substantial vertebrae in the 
 Devonian fishes is found in the last gradation of the class of 
 fishes, among the Cyclostomes. He has reason to think that 
 the internal case for the brain in the Devonian fishes was 
 cartilaginous. So it is in the sturgeon ; so it is in all em- 
 bryos. Certain arrangements of the fins, as well as the hete- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 167 
 
 rocercal tail, and the inferior position of the mouth, complete 
 these curious and most convincing analogies. 
 
 The Reptiles to the cold blood of the fish add a higher 
 circulatory organization, as also lungs for aerial respiration ; 
 all of them (for exceptions are only apparent) are oviparous. 
 Amidst the confusions of existing classifications, it is possible 
 to trace three leading divisions, of which the tortoise, the 
 lizard, and the frog are the several representatives, namely, 
 the Chelonia, the Sauria, and the Batrachia. Cuvier makes 
 a fourth order of the serpents ; but Merrem and other natu- 
 ralists have shown, I think successfully, that these are but a 
 reduction from the lacertine portion of the sauria. 
 
 The CHELONIA are remarkable for the box-like case 
 in which most of them are inclosed, a peculiar deve- 
 lopment of the ribs of the animal, and which forms an 
 admirable means of passive defence. They are animals of 
 inert faculties, but great tenacity of life, and, generally 
 speaking, the most harmless of all the reptiles, many of them 
 feeding exclusively on vegetable substances. Destitute of 
 teeth, they exhibit, like the birds, only a horny armature of 
 the jaws, and even this is, in one genus, replaced by skin 
 only. 
 
 The Chelonia are for the most part tropical animals, being 
 seldom seen beyond the 20th degree of latitude. Within 
 that range, however, the marine species are remarkable for 
 the long voyages they annually undertake, for the purpose of 
 depositing their eggs. It is also found, from our stony records, 
 that the Chelonia were much more widely diffused over the 
 earth in the ages of the oolite and tertiary than they are now. 
 
 The marine chelonia Turtles (Chelones) demand the 
 first notice. In this group we find the largest existing speci- 
 mens of the order ; some of them reach six and even seven 
 feet in length, and weigh seven or eight hundred pounds. 
 All of them have extremities modified into paddles, for marine 
 progression, with the toes enveloped in the membrane, and a 
 very slight development of claws ; but there is a natural divi- 
 sion of the chelones in respect of habits and even of organiza- 
 tion. One sub-group, amongst which is the common Green 
 
168 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Turtle, so well known for its palatable qualities, is composed 
 of species altogether herbivorous and of gregarious and inno- 
 cent habits. These animals may be seen in herds at the 
 bottom of the sea, quietly browsing on the weeds growing 
 there. Sometimes they enter the mouths of large rivers, and 
 are occasionally seen to make their way ashore, apparently in 
 search of food. Their plates are discoidal, laid edge towards 
 edge, with intervals of cartilage, by which their bodies have a 
 certain flexibility. Another sub-group comprises turtles of car- 
 nivorous habits, active, and when attacked, fierce ; examples are 
 seen in the Loggerhead Turtle, which has the plates arranged 
 as above, and the Hawksbill, in which they are imbricated, or 
 laid edge over edge ; the latter being the animal which fur- 
 nishes the arts with the elegant substance called Tortoise-shell. 
 Finally, there is a genus, also of carnivorous habits, the 
 Sphargis or Coriaceous Turtle, in which the exterior is not 
 composed of shell, but of a leathery skin, having seven tuber- 
 culated ridges passing lengthwise along the back. These 
 carnivorous genera have a more powerful form of mouth than 
 the rest, and in some the claws are more marked. Thus armed, 
 the Loggerhead, for example, will defend itself from a man 
 with courage and ferocity, will snap a walking-cane in twain 
 with one effort of its jaws, and not let go anything it has 
 seized until its own life is extinct. These genera live upon 
 mollusca, Crustacea, and fishes ; and even the young crocodiles 
 are liable to the attacks of the loggerhead. The progression 
 of all the turtles in their proper element is rapid. M. Audubon 
 says " The Green and Hawkbilled, in particular, remind you 
 by their celerity, and the ease of their motions, of the pro- 
 gress of a bird in the air." 
 
 In all the remaining chelonia, the paddle form of the ex- 
 tremities is exchanged for legs and feet, the latter furnished 
 with claws. 
 
 The River Tortoises (Tryonices), conspicuous tenants of 
 the Ganges and Euphrates, the Niger and Nile, the Mississippi 
 and Ohio, are next in size to the Turtles, some being three 
 feet long. With an imperfect development of the osseous 
 case, they are enveloped in a soft skin, which has caused 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 169 
 
 them to be often denominated Soft Tortoises. The feet are 
 palmated for swimming, and the toes exhibit three claws. 
 These animals are of fierce and energetic character, living 
 upon fishes and reptiles, and not scrupling to attack the 
 young alligators. They dart out their head at their prey 
 with inconceivable rapidity, and tear it with their sharp- 
 edged beaks and claws, after the manner of the predaceous 
 birds. 
 
 The Emydes, sometimes called Fresh-water Tortoises, 
 sometimes Marsh Tortoises, are of many various species, 
 haunting lakes, marshes, and small rivers in Asia, Africa, 
 Australia, but more particularly America, where the proper 
 habitat is most largely presented. They have shelly cases, 
 which in youth exhibit the imperfect closing peculiar to the 
 turtles, but afterwards become complete. Certain species can, 
 by flexures in the case, close in their head, tails, and feet, so as 
 to set enemies at defiance. The feet are palmated, and pro- 
 vided with five claws before and four behind. A remarkable 
 rapidity of movement distinguishes this family, which devours 
 not only aquatic worms, insects, mollusks, and small reptiles, 
 but carrion. Among the emydes are species, such as Cestudo 
 Carolina and Emys Muhlenburgii, which tend to a land life, 
 and have the feet less palmated than the rest. There are also 
 genera, Pyxis and Kinyxis, the one belonging to the Old 
 World, the other to the New, which are regarded as con- 
 necting links between the emydes and land tortoises. 
 
 Several aquatic genera of remarkable forms are not yet 
 settled in any definite place in our systems. One of these, 
 the Emysaura Serpentina, which has a large head and a 
 crocodilian tail, lives in the North American rivers, feeding 
 on fish and small birds. Another, Chelys Fimbriata, or 
 Matamata, with hardly any tail, has a large neck and snouted 
 head, in which the mouth opens crosswise ; it belongs exclu- 
 sively to the rivers of Guiana. Mr. Swainson makes of these 
 genera a group, to which he gives the name of Chelydrida. 
 
 Last are the Land Tortoises (Testudines), in which, with a 
 perfect osseous case, there are extremities formed entirely for 
 land progression, terminating in rounded callous stumps, with 
 
170 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 indistinct unguiculate toes. These animals are found in tro- 
 pical regions all over the earth. Generally they are of small 
 size ; but in the Galapoagos islands Mr. Darwin found them 
 several feet in length, and we know that in the tertiary era 
 there were species in India of colossal proportions. The greater 
 number of the land tortoises are vegetable feeders, and similar 
 in disposition to the herbivorous turtles. A small group of 
 species, already adverted to, stand apart, as exhibiting imme- 
 diate affinities to the emydes. 
 
 Seeing the various characters of the Chelonia, and keeping 
 in view the principles of the genealogical system, we have 
 good reason for believing that two or more stirpes exist in 
 this order of animals. The herbivorous species of sea and 
 land undoubtedly form portions of one family, the transition 
 from the one to the other being attended by little besides a 
 slight conversion of the extremities, a maturing of the develop- 
 ment of the osseous case, and that reduction of bulk which is 
 everywhere seen in terrestrial advances from marine originals. 
 Another stirps, perhaps starting in the coriaceous turtle, in- 
 volves the Tryonices, or Soft Tortoises, which may be regarded 
 as having merely passed from a marine to a fluviatile life, as 
 has been done in many other instances. The Emydes, for 
 which an original may be found in some of the other carni- 
 vorous turtles, constitute another line terminating in certain 
 land species. On the chelydes it would perhaps be premature 
 to speculate. In our investigations in this order, it is highly 
 instructive to mark the improvement in the filling up of the 
 interstices of the osseous frame as we advance from the marine 
 and fluviatile species. These interstices are seen in the youth 
 of the emydes and land tortoises, but as age advances they are 
 obliterated. But what is in them a youthful and transient 
 character, is permanent in the former animals, marking clearly 
 their precedence in the genealogical scale. 
 
 No better word than SAURIA seems attainable for the 
 greatly varied order which next occurs, a combination of all 
 the loricate and squamate reptiles. The crocodile, the lizard, 
 and serpent, will suggest the principal forms to those least 
 acquainted with zoology. They are extensively distributed 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 171 
 
 over the earth, but chiefly in warm climates, and, being for 
 the most part disliked by man, they are usually seen to decline 
 as the human population advances. Of the three great rep- 
 tilian orders, they may be considered the most carnivorous 
 and destructive, though few are of great strength. In the 
 time of the secondary formation, it was different. Vast sau- 
 rians then traversed both sea and land, the undoubted 
 masters of the animal world. Now, excepting in the croco- 
 dile family, and a few of the serpents, bulk and strength have 
 alike departed from the order. 
 
 The Crocodilia form a distinct and well marked family, 
 comprehending the several genera of the common Crocodile, 
 distributed in Africa, India, and America, the Alligators and 
 Caimans of North America, and the Gavial, peculiar to India. 
 All of these are well known to be animals of large size, living 
 in rivers, fierce and carnivorous, and serving a useful end in 
 devouring the dead animals which are usually floated in great 
 quantities down the large continental streams. Their exterior 
 presents " distinct series of bones of moderate size, embedded, 
 as it were, in the substance of the skin, and covered externally 
 with a thick cuticle ;" hence the term loricata, or mailed, 
 which has been applied to them. The head is large, with an 
 enormous gape, and some arrangements in respect of teeth, 
 nostrils, and gullet, which appear admirably adapted for an 
 animal requiring to catch its prey in the water. The origin 
 of this reptilian family is to be sought amongst the great 
 aquatic saurians of the secondary formation ; the ichthyosaur, 
 in particular, whose head is entirely crocodilian, while its 
 general organization is fish-like. Afterwards, connecting 
 links occur in the teleosaur, steneosaur, &c. 
 
 The remainder of the sauria present various forms tolerably 
 distinguished from each other, but which are usually compre- 
 hended under the general term lacertine, the lizard being 
 regarded as their type. First, and nearest to the crocodiles, 
 may be cited the Varanidce, a group composed of the Ouran 
 or varan of the Nile, the Monitors of both worlds, the tupi- 
 nambis, and other genera; animals living upon small reptiles 
 and insects, chiefly frequenting land, but also occasionally 
 
172 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 haunting the banks of rivers. The varan is so like the croco- 
 dile, and makes such an approach to it in bulk, that the 
 Egyptians believe it to spring from an egg of that animal 
 which has been hatched in dry earth. The skin of the vara- 
 nians is " furnished with enchased scales, which are tubercu- 
 lous, projecting, rounded upon the head as well as upon the 
 back and sides, always distributed in rings or circular bands, 
 parallel under the belly and round the tail." The teeth are 
 planted in a furrow, and curve backward. Next may be 
 mentioned the Lacertidae, or True Lizards, of which the only 
 living examples are small insect-eating animals, in a great 
 variety of specific forms, scattered over the warm and tem- 
 perate countries of the Old World ; the least repulsive of all 
 reptiles, often indeed of beautiful form and colouring. In 
 intimate alliance with them may be placed the Geckos, which 
 are of nocturnal habits, and the Chameleons, which again are 
 inhabitants of trees, all of these being likewise insectivorous. 
 In palaeontology, the lacertian animals date from an earlier 
 time than any other Sauria. The huge extinct Monitors of 
 the Thuringian Zechstein, the thecodonts of the nearly con- 
 temporary dolomitic conglomerate of Redland near Bristol, 
 were the patriarchs of these families, and are the earliest 
 fossil reptiles certainly known to us. The Mosasaurus, Geo- 
 saurus, and Megalosaurus, were likewise huge early speci- 
 mens of this division of the sauria. Finally, we have the 
 Iguanida, the most harmless of all the Sauria, being gene- 
 rally restricted to a vegetable diet ; likewise small animals in 
 our time, but exemplified at a former period in the enormous 
 iguanodon of the Wealden. To this family belong the anolis, 
 stellio, dragons, basilisks, and other species. 
 
 The serpents ( Ophzdia) are usually placed as a distinct 
 order of reptiles ; such was the arrangement of Cuvier ; but 
 Merrem and several other modern naturalists of high cha- 
 racter, place them in connexion with the squamate sauria ; 
 and there, undoubtedly, natural classification requires that 
 they should be. From those sauria to the ophidia, there is 
 such a series of transitional forms in the scinks and chalcidse, 
 where we see the body gradually becoming elongated and 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 173 
 
 more serpentiform, and the limbs diminishing away to mere 
 rudiments, that it is impossible to assign exact limits to the 
 various genera. We may even see in the perfect varanians a 
 preparation for this new form. In these animals, the bones 
 of the head have, in part, that looseness of structure and 
 adherence which is carried to so remarkable an extent in the 
 serpents, which, being obliged to take their prey entire, could 
 not otherwise swallow it. The varanians, too, move in a ser- 
 pentine manner, using their long tail to aid their progression, 
 and to enable them the better to leap upon their prey ; pecu- 
 liarities in which they greatly resemble the serpents. In the 
 last lacertilia, the ribs are increased in number, the two pairs 
 of limbs are removed farther and farther from each other, 
 and become small and weak ; in some species the anterior, 
 and in others the posterior pair, alone remain ; until at last 
 they are reduced to mere rudiments which do not appear 
 above the skin. The common slow- worm is an example of 
 a lacertilian in this state. At the same time, to suit the 
 necessities of a body considerably attenuated, one of the lungs 
 is gradually shrunk up, until at length, in the true serpent, 
 only a vestige of it remains. Such is the actual history of the 
 great serpent families reductions from the lacertilia, to suit 
 a life generally skulking and furtive ; and there could not 
 well be a more lively illustration of the doctrine of the trans- 
 formation of animals. It furnishes a strong proof of the 
 readiness of nature to go back as well as to go forward, 
 according as circumstances shall dictate. It shows how 
 futile is the objection to the development theory, from such 
 facts as the crocodile-like arrangement of teeth in the theco- 
 dont lizards, the fathers of this order ; an advance of grade 
 being a saltus which may give such a superiority to the 
 patriarchs of a series, while it depends on the accident of ex- 
 ternal conditions whether this is to be improved upon, main- 
 tained, or degraded. Many existing serpents are much larger 
 than any existing lacertilia, the parent family ; but it must 
 be remembered that the early lizards were of enormous bulk. 
 How perfectly does palaeontology harmonize with this view 
 of the genesis of the ophidia! no fossil serpent occurring 
 
174 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 in that secondary formation, where all the other reptilian 
 forms so greatly abounded. Such harmonies may always be 
 expected where the true track of natural investigation has 
 been arrived at. 
 
 A naked moist skin, sometimes smooth, sometimes covered 
 with papillae or tubercles, is the only universal character of 
 the third division of the Reptiles the BATRACHIA, so called 
 from the Greek word for a frog, as that animal is the most 
 conspicuous example of the order. The animals of this order 
 are also remarkable for coming into active existence in a fish 
 form (the tadpole), and passing in the course of active life 
 through one of those metamorphoses which in other animals 
 are undergone before birth. They realize, as has been said, 
 before our eyes, one of the grade transitions presumed by the 
 development theory. In some species, however, certain por- 
 tions of the organization are arrested at the fish stage, and so 
 continue through life. 
 
 The frogs and toads (Eanidce) are the batrachians most 
 universally diffused over the earth and most familiarly known. 
 They are harmless creatures, generally of small size, living upon 
 slugs and insects, which they catch by darting out their long 
 soft tongue, the end of which is, for this purpose, covered 
 with a viscid fluid. They hibernate in mud or water, thus 
 living a long time, not only without food, but without aerial 
 respiration, a proof of the low organic character of these ani- 
 mals. The frogs spend much of their time in water ; some 
 assume a partially arboreal life, and have certain peculiarities 
 in the feet which assist them in climbing. The toads are 
 more terrestrial in their habits ; but all alike have to propa- 
 gate in the water, where their shell-less eggs are deposited in 
 long strings, a single mother producing upwards of a thousand 
 young. Some foreign species of the ranidse greatly exceed 
 ours in size ; but, in comparison with the two other reptilian 
 orders, the batrachian may be said to consist of little animals. 
 Teeth are wanting in most of the toads, and they are developed 
 on a humble scale in the frogs. The whole of the ranidae 
 are destitute of tail ; neither have their toes any armature, ex- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 175 
 
 cepting a horny sheath in a few species. They are also devoid 
 of ribs, or present at the most rudiments of such bones. 
 
 The ungainly form of the toad has caused it to be no fa- 
 vourite with our race, and given rise to many reports against 
 it, particularly one respecting its venomous qualities, which is 
 quite false. A French naturalist remarks that, if we could 
 behold the frog without prejudice, we should see in it an 
 animal uniting an elegant form with light and slender limbs, 
 adorning the banks of the rivulet with its pleasing colours 
 (only less variable in some species than those of the chameleon), 
 and animating the scene with its light and lively gambols. 
 The croaking noise of the frog is proverbial ; this is changed 
 in the love season to a soft and plaintive note. A modern 
 writer says, " A traveller towards the desert shores of the 
 Caspian and the Volga would imagine that he heard of a sud- 
 den, in the evening, a joyous assembly of men and women 
 laughing very heartily. He approaches ; the inextinguishable 
 laughter redoubles among the rocks, and, to his astonishment, 
 he finds that it proceeds from an assembly of enormous black 
 toads, celebrating their nuptial rites." ( TT ) 
 
 Although the frogs and toads are now, generally speaking, 
 small animals, we must recollect that such has not always been 
 the case. The Labyrinthodon of the Warwick Sandstone, an 
 animal allied to the frog, is believed to have been as large as 
 a good-sized hog. It may at the same time be remarked that, 
 if this was the utmost size attained by batrachia in the era of the 
 secondary formation, they were then, as now, relatively much 
 smaller than the saurian order, of which several reached the 
 length of thirty, forty, and even, it is believed, seventy feet. 
 
 A second division of batrachia is composed of animals of 
 which the salamander is the type ; hence called Salamandridce. 
 In them, the tail is largely developed : in other respects, as in 
 their reproductive history, they resemble the preceding divi- 
 sion, the water newts being analogous to the frogs, and the 
 land salamanders to the toads. They also resemble the ranidae 
 in habits ; but one remarkable species, the Menopoma of the 
 Ohio and Alleghany rivers, which reaches two feet in length, 
 
176 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 is more fierce and carnivorous than any of the frogs or 
 toads. The salamandridae are extensively diffused over the 
 earth ; they generally are small animals, but one species, 
 Sieboltia, which inhabits a lake upon a basaltic mountain in 
 Japan, is three feet in length, and fossil species are found in 
 the schists of GEningen (miocene formation), which must have 
 been of nearly twice this measurement. The fluid which 
 exudes from the salamanders, as from other batrachia, is pro- 
 bably what has given rise to the vulgar notion that these ani- 
 mals can resist the action of fire. 
 
 The remaining batrachia are isolated species, generally 
 limited in locality, and all of them retain in their maturity 
 some portion of the fish character. The Amphiuma, an eel- 
 like animal, two or three feet long, which is found in stagnant 
 pools in the more southern of the United States, has apertures 
 in the sides of the neck, the last vestige of the gill structure. 
 Deep underground, in waters never visited by daylight, re- 
 sides the blind Proteus, which continues to have entire gills 
 branching from the neck throughout the whole of life, and 
 only depends in a less degree upon lungs. With four short 
 and feeble limbs, it departs little from the form of the fish. 
 The Sirens, which inhabit marshes in Carolina, have no hind 
 limbs, and only rudiments of the anterior pair. In the North 
 American lakes is the Menolranchus, with constant gills, and 
 four very small limbs : it sometimes attains the length of three 
 feet. Another of these gilled batrachia is the Axolotl of the 
 Mexican lakes, the flesh of which is esteemed a delicacy. 
 
 The reduction of limbs in some of these latter species reminds 
 us of the lacertilian animals on the approach of that family to 
 the serpent form. It is not therefore surprising, to learn that 
 there is a genus of undoubted batrachians which are wholly 
 serpentine in figure, that is, without limbs, and also possessed, 
 like the serpents, of unequal lungs. These are the Cecilia, or 
 blind-worm, and kindred species, all of them inhabitants of 
 warm countries ; usually of a very attenuated form, and about 
 two feet long. Till lately, the cecilia was ranked with ser- 
 pents ; but its passing through a metamorphosis, united to a 
 consideration of its naked skin, has at length assigned it to 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 177 
 
 the present order. Vegetable matters, as well as mud and 
 sand, have been found in the stomachs of the ceciliadae. 
 
 The batrachia have a particular value on the present occa- 
 sion, as, although probably but the relics of an order once 
 containing many more genera, and some of these much 
 larger in bulk, they present unequivocal affinities to the grade 
 below them, and also striking affinities amongst themselves, 
 while their reproduction supplies a faithful picture of the 
 principal phenomenon concerned in the development theory. 
 Several genera, by retaining portions of the fish character, 
 make the descent of the whole from fishes still more ap- 
 parent. Professor Owen has shown that not merely in the 
 retention of gills, but in peculiarities of teeth, can the nearness 
 of some of the batrachia to fishes be distinguished. The 
 Ranidae appear to compose two kindred lines ; the toads, in 
 their more terrestrial habits, may be said to make a greater 
 advance than the frogs. In the Salamandridse, there are also 
 traces of at least two lines : amongst them, from smooth skins 
 and aquatic habits, to tuberculated skins and land habits, we 
 pass through a well-knit chain of affinities. In the other 
 Batrachia, we see only detached developments from the 
 neighbouring fish form, which we may suppose, in some 
 instances at least, to have been prevented from advancing 
 into new forms by the circumstances in which they are 
 placed. 
 
 With this account of the Reptiles, the geological history of 
 the class, as far as it goes, appears in harmony. First, it is 
 after fish that reptiles occur in time, as it is after fish that 
 they stand in organization. Early in the Carbonigenous era, 
 after fishes had existed for the space of an entire formation, 
 there arises a family assuming a trace of reptilian character, 
 in an inner row of Saurian teeth. The Sauroid fishes, as 
 they are called, increase and multiply, and, several ages 
 thereafter, in the Muschelkalk, the Enaliosauria, or fish- 
 crocodiles (ichthyosaur, etc.), are presented, in which the 
 passage to the reptile is clear and distinct. Before this event 
 in the saurian line, a similar and more effectual transition 
 had taken place in at least two other animal series, resulting 
 
178 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 in those specimens of the lacertilian order which are found in 
 the Keuper, and those batrachians upon which Mr. Owen 
 has conferred the name of Labyrinthodon. In these in- 
 stances, our records are meagre, and it is therefore not sur- 
 prising that specimens uniting the fish with the reptile, as is 
 done by the enaliosauria, are not as yet found. But still the 
 general affinity to the fish character, as well as a certain 
 degree of aquatic habit, is shown in the biconcave vertebrae of 
 these early lizards and frogs. Of what has been remarked as 
 to the late occurrence of serpents, it is not necessary to make 
 repetition. 
 
 The next class above the Reptiles is that of BIRDS, in which 
 warm blood makes its first appearance, and which are marked 
 by various other traits of superiority, particularly in the ner- 
 vous system, though an oviparous mode of reproduction is 
 still maintained. It is a class comprehending a vast number 
 of families, adapted to different spheres of existence and 
 habits; some predaceous and sanguinary, others innocent and 
 supported by a vegetable diet ; some adapted for living upon 
 the water, others upon the land; some designed to dwell 
 upon the ground, others upon trees ; yet exhibiting, through- 
 out the whole, and under every variety of external adapta- 
 tion, a much greater unity of structure than any other class 
 of equal importance. Unusually clear chains of affinity run 
 through the class, one genus melting into another by the 
 nicest shadings ; and yet, from the unfortunate principle of 
 classification assumed by naturalists in which the most ex- 
 ternal characters are taken as the chief basis of arrangement 
 there is no class presented to us in a more confused manner. 
 
 A true classification of the Birds exhibits them in the order 
 of succession which they have observed in coming into exist- 
 ence, according to the general principle explained in this 
 work. 
 
 The first true division of the Birds is into three stirpes ; 
 one whose food consists chiefly of vegetable matters ; another 
 which live wholly upon flesh ; a third who, as compared with 
 either of the preceding, may be said to be omnivorous. The 
 starting point with all three is in the Swimming Birds (JN T <z- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 179 
 
 tatores of Cuvier), where the organization is admittedly the 
 humblest, and to which an approximation from the Turtles 
 has long been acknowledged. In this order, as it is called by 
 Cuvier, there are some genera which present the typical bird 
 form in a strikingly imperfect manner, the feet being placed 
 so far behind the centre of gravity that the animal walks no 
 better than a seal, while the anterior extremities short, and, 
 in some instances, scaled, rather than feathered do not serve 
 for flight, but are used exactly like the paddles of the marine 
 turtles in propelling the body through the water ; often for 
 several hundred yards under it. It unexpectedly appears 
 probable that the Birds are derived solely from this order of 
 the Reptiles, and that this is the cause of their more concen- 
 trated unity of structure. The affinity to that inferior class 
 is certainly less clearly shown than are the affinities which 
 pervade the class itself; but can we be sure that the transition 
 from class to class was always to give intermediate forms, or 
 that these, if given, were necessarily to be preserved, either as 
 living species or as fossils ? The Chelonia present a sufficient 
 variety of characters to have been the sole parentage of the 
 Bird class ; many being fierce and carnivorous, while others 
 are vegetable feeders and of gentle character. They are now 
 chiefly tropical, while the swimming birds are hyperboreal ; 
 but the secondary and tertiary formations show that the che- 
 lonia were once much more widely distributed than they now 
 are. 
 
 The First of the great stirpes is that which gives us the 
 birds most important of all to us the domestic poultry. Its 
 root is in certain of the natatorial families, the Divers (Colym- 
 lidce}, Grebes, &c. These are Swimmers native to the 
 Arctic Ocean, though accustomed to migrate southward in 
 winter. They are immediately followed by the Mergansers, 
 Ducks, Geese, Swans, (AnatidceJ and the Phalleropes (Phal- 
 leropida,} Gallinules, and Coots (Lobipedida), which still 
 preserve the aquatic habits, and the webbed or lobated feet 
 necessary for progression in the water, but tend more to resi- 
 dence in rivers and other inland waters. In these, however, 
 we see a clear separation into three subdivisions, one com- 
 H 2 
 
180 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 posed of the Mergansers and Ducks, which live in great part 
 upon animal matters, another comprising the Geese and 
 Swans, which are purely vegetable feeders, and a third em- 
 bracing the Gallinules and Coots, whose diet is mixed. 
 
 The tendency of these animals, in consequence of their 
 tastes in aliment, was to advance along rivers and the shores 
 of lakes, to those adjacent low grounds where vegetable food, 
 worms, and insects, are to be found. They landed, we may 
 say, either upon sandy beaches or upon those low shores 
 which, in the early ages of the world, antecedent to a time of 
 cultivation, were wholly covered with marshes. On came 
 the tide of population behind ; it behoves them to spread 
 landward for subsistence. The consequence was a modifica- 
 tion of the hitherto natatorial forms of these birds to suit a 
 strolling life upon soft sands and in marshes. The webbing 
 of the toes shrunk, being no longer required for swimming ; 
 the toes were elongated, so as to give support upon a yielding 
 ground or bottom ; the tarsi were also lengthened, to raise 
 the body of the bird above the shallow water in which it 
 walked : at the same time, the animal acquired a greater 
 length of neck and of bill to enable it to feed in these waters. 
 Behold then the Wading Birds (Grallatores of Cuvier) ; 
 merely a transformation of their swimming progenitors ! 
 In some parts of the earth, however, the regions adjacent 
 to the sea were not marshes, but extensive sandy plains, 
 presenting means of subsistence somewhat scantier, but still 
 not to be overlooked. The consequence was a branch of the 
 swimmers, adapted by length and strength of limbs for that 
 rapid progression from one place to another which is required 
 by animals placed on extensive wastes. This branch com- 
 prises the Running Birds (Cur sores), the Ostrich in Africa, 
 the Emeu and Cassowary of Australia, the Rhea of Ame- 
 rica, the Apterix of New Zealand ; characterized by an 
 extinction of the hind toe, which is not needed in their 
 field of existence, and a reduction of the wings for the 
 same reason in a modified degree, with, however, an ap- 
 proximation to mammalian characters, in the hair-like ap- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 181 
 
 pearance of the feathers, the presence of a diaphragm in 
 the viscera, and other structural minutiae. 
 
 The three subdivisions of the Swimmers are with tole- 
 rable distinctness seen passing each into its several progeny 
 among the waders. Looking at once to external features, 
 and to habits and characters, we readily select, as the de- 
 scendants of the anatine birds, the Ardeidce (Herons, Spoon- 
 bills, and Storks), the most brilliantly plumaged of the 
 "Waders, as the Ducks are of the Swimmers, and equally 
 addicted to a foul kind of animal diet, being, as is well 
 known, amongst the most active scavengers of eastern and 
 other cities. The anserine birds claim a progeny in the 
 GruidcE (Cranes), whose form of head, and the position of 
 the eye, as well as the elevation of the hind toe upon the 
 leg, remind us of that family, while their constancy to a 
 pure vegetable diet is equally conspicuous. The Phalle- 
 ropes, Gallinales, and Coots, reappear in a variety of forms? 
 possibly forming inferior divisions or branches, yet evidently 
 all much allied, the EaUidce (Rails), Otida (Bustards), par- 
 tially cursorial in figure, the Charadriadce (Plovers), and the 
 ScolopacidfE (Snipes, Sandpipers, and Curlews). All of these 
 birds are mixed feeders, of gentle and timid character, with 
 a tendency to walking power, which in some instances en- 
 ables the animal to escape more surely by threading the brake 
 than by flight. This last property may be connected in some 
 way with the form of the feet shown by the grebes, phalle- 
 ropes, rails, and other genera of the subdivision, these being 
 not webbed, like those of the other swimming birds, but lo- 
 bated ; that is, having a separate lobe expanded along the 
 sides of each toe. 
 
 The origin of all the bird life as yet spoken of, was that 
 ocean which we now see beating the northern shores of the 
 two great continents. There is the nativity of all these 
 Swimmers ; there do they yet live in sea and air darkening 
 abundance. Swimming birds, corresponding to them, 
 scarcely exist anywhere in southern oceans ; there is but one 
 development of anatine birds in that quarter, in the geese and 
 
182 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 coreopsis of Australia. The rise of wading descendants 
 was the consequence of a spread inland ; that is, harmoniz- 
 ing with that system of animal migration which the swim- 
 ming birds are still seen practising. This movement of 
 bird life soon overpassed the borders of rivers, lakes, and 
 marshes, and came to elevated, dry, and sylvan grounds; 
 and a necessity for other modifications then arose. 
 
 At least two of the subdivisions under notice had descend- 
 ants suited to the new fields of existence. The cranes, spread 
 as far south as India, there gave forth, as a great colony for 
 its rich woods, the equally beautiful and useful Pheasant 
 family (Phasianidce), comprising the trained peacock, the 
 jungle-fowl, and common poultry ; in central America, in 
 like manner, they presented the corresponding genera of 
 turkeys and currassows. Thus came those useful domestic 
 birds, some of which have been our servants as long as man 
 has had a history, and which have entered so much into our 
 common associations and literature. From them, again, pro- 
 ceeded the Pigeons (Colwmbidce) whose beauty and inno- 
 cence are even more endearingly present to us. To those 
 who see but the common fowl and the ordinary pigeon of our 
 country, it may be difficult to suppose such a connexion ; but 
 in India, the native seat of the family, the forms of the dove 
 are numerous, and amongst them are species (for example, 
 Geophilus Nicobarensis) which are evidently intermediate. 
 
 The game birds, grouse, partridges, quails, &c. (Tetrao- 
 nidae} are descendants of the rails and bustards, appropriate 
 to the heathy moorland and mountain. So ends the first 
 great stirps of the class of Birds. 
 
 Some general principles are clearly to be observed in the 
 genealogy. Each subdivision preserves its own character, 
 particularly as to food, through all the transformations which 
 it undergoes. Thus the anserine birds, the cranes, and the 
 poultry and pigeons, are all of them innocent vegetable-feed- 
 ing animals. There is also an invariable diminution of size 
 of body from the oceanic original to the inland descendants : 
 for example, the anserine birds sink in the cranes, these fall 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 183 
 
 off again in the poultry, and these again in the pigeons. At 
 the same time, intelligence and the tendency to domesticity 
 always increase. 
 
 The Second great stirps is composed of birds destined by 
 their organization and dispositions to act as destructives over 
 the rest. Its chief subdivision commences in a swimming 
 family (ProcellaridcR), of which the huge Albatross, with its 
 ten feet expanse of wings and its great hooked bill, is an 
 example. The tendency of this family was not generally to 
 low shores, but to cliffy wildernesses. Accordingly it passed 
 through no wading forms, unless the solitary species, the 
 Secretary of India and the Mauritius, be an exception. It 
 passed at once into the majestic Eagle, the grandest of all 
 birds, and a terrible image of unrelenting destructiveness. 
 Some of the aquiline genus, as the Osprey, still haunt the 
 shores and rivers, while others take up their abode in inland 
 and generally Alpine grounds, frequenting the plains only 
 for the sake of prey. The Kites and Buzzards show an 
 affinity, as of descent, to the Eagles. Another subdivision 
 presents, in suite, the Falcons (including hawks), and the 
 Owls (Strigidce), the latter being addicted to living near the 
 haunts of men and pursuing prey by night. A link between 
 the two is seen in the peregrine falcon, both in its owlish 
 visage and its inclination to live in tall buildings. 
 
 Another swimming family, composed of the Pelicans and 
 Cormorants (Pelicanidce), gives rise to the Vultures ; and 
 thus is completed the raptorial stirps. 
 
 The Third stirps is in some respects the most remarkable 
 of all. It spreads out into a much greater variety of species 
 than either of the other two ; it is diffused over every 
 country of the globe. On the whole, it may be described as 
 omnivorous, though some genera are exclusively flesh-eaters, 
 and even distinguished by their predaceous and sanguinary 
 character. Hopping is a prevailing, though not exclusive, 
 mo.le of progression. The birds are generally, though not in 
 every instance, remarkable for their wariness and vivacity; 
 some are noted for their chattering and imitative powers ; 
 
184 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 some of the most advanced genera attract attention by their 
 beautiful song. 
 
 This stirps starts with the Gulls (LaridtR), an oceanic tribe 
 distributed over the whole world, of active flying habits, 
 generally of pure white plumage, presenting a variety of 
 species, some of which, as the Terns, tend to a river life, and 
 are of a swallow-like form. The mental character of the 
 gulls does not stand high in our estimate ; but we often do 
 injustice in this respect to the sea-birds, believing that to be 
 stupidity which is only unconsciousness of danger arising from 
 the habitat being remote from human haunts. Mr. Edmond- 
 stone of Zetland speaks of the " characteristic inquisitiveness 
 and vivacity" of many of the gulls, being the very qualities 
 to be expected in the patriarchs of this stirps. Certain 
 species, as the Skua, are predaceous and fierce, and the 
 Glaucous Gull is a well known attendant upon sailing vessels 
 for the sake of offal. Like the crows, the gulls attack and 
 devour: they will quickly eat up a dead whale. The 
 common gull, again, comes to land in cultivated regions, 
 and follows the plough in search of what it may turn up. It 
 is not unworthy of notice, considering how this stirps is 
 generally distinguished in respect of voice, that a particular 
 species of the Laridse is known, from its peculiar cry, by the 
 name of the Laughing Gull. 
 
 Though the Gulls are upon the whole a whitish race, there 
 are species presenting an admixture of black. This should 
 prepare us in some degree to hear the crows (Cormda), 
 and Kingfishers (Halcyonidce) presented as the immediate 
 successors of the Gulls, more especially as one of the former 
 family the Pie is chequered, and white crows sometimes 
 occur as exceptions to the rule. But the immediate depend- 
 ence of the colour of plumage upon conditions is one of the 
 most familiar facts of the philosophical naturalist, and the 
 changes in this respect which individual birds undergo in 
 their moultings before attaining maturity, might well recon- 
 cile us to the most startling transitions. 
 
 The Kingfishers small birds of brilliant metallic plu- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 185 
 
 mage belong to the sea, but extend into rivers. In their 
 wide diffusion over the earth, in their habit of darting upon 
 fish, and in their voice, which, in an Australian species, is a 
 laugh, they show their title to the place assigned to them. 
 To them we affiliate the Bee-eaters (Meropida), extensively 
 diffused in the old world, and the Rollers. These birds are 
 all fissirostral, a change of beak having taken place to fit 
 them for catching the insects on which they feed. 
 
 We now come to the well known, universally diffused 
 Crows, the ancestors of by far the greater portion of the 
 present stirps. Intelligent, wary, social, omnivorous, though 
 some tend more to flesh-eating than others, this family is 
 everywhere well marked; everywhere are they an object of 
 marvel and curious study to our species, to whom it almost 
 appears as if their voices were a kind of speech. In the 
 genealogy of animals, their place is extremely important, for 
 to scarcely any has so vast and various a progeny been 
 given. It clearly appears that various crows, the Raven, 
 Rook, Jay, Pie, &c., are the heads of so many distinct 
 families, which have assumed various sub- characters in 
 different regions of the globe, according as they were 
 affected by external conditions ; " a mighty maze, but not 
 without a plan." 
 
 Taking the predaceous corvidae first they start in the 
 Raven of the old world, and misnamed Black Vulture of 
 America ; the largest of all the species ; animals keen- 
 scented, cautious, yet fierce, and which do not scruple even to 
 attack some of the larger mammalia. In our continent, we 
 see the raven and carrion crow followed by the hooded crow, 
 which, being only a reduced image of its predecessor, will 
 without much difficulty pair with it, and produce a prolific 
 offspring. 
 
 The crows are classed by naturalists as Conirostres ; that 
 is, having a conical beak. The beak is, nevertheless, con- 
 siderably curved in the predaceous species, so as to approach 
 the hooked form : in the American carrion crow it is as de- 
 cidedly hooked as that of any raptorial bird. This should 
 
186 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 prepare us for hearing of series of birds descended from the 
 predaceous crows, with that reduced kind of raptorial beak 
 which, having a curve and a notch or tooth in the upper 
 mandible, gives them in classification the name of Den- 
 tirostres. One of these genera is the Shrikes or Butcher 
 Birds (LaniadcR), a numerous and widely-diffused assem- 
 blage, living upon the smaller birds and insects, the former 
 of which, the shrike sticks, when killed, upon thorns, as a 
 butcher hangs up meat in his stall; hence the name of the 
 genus. From the shrikes also proceed certain genera of 
 eminently insectivorous habits, and some of which, in ac- 
 cordance with that kind of prey, have the reduced form of 
 beak called fissirostral, accompanied by a great width of 
 gape namely, the Swallows, Swifts, and Martins (Hirun- 
 dinidcR) ; the Nightjars and Goatsuckers (Caprimulgidcz), 
 which, feeding by night, are to the swallows what the owls 
 are to the falcons ; also the Fly-catchers (Muscicapidce), a 
 genus so near to the shrikes in aspect, that several of the 
 species have been classed by various naturalists in that 
 group. 
 
 From the shrikes, moreover, if we can trust to an admitted 
 affinity, come the Thrushes and Blackbirds (Merulidfs^ 
 whose fine song has blinded us in some degree to their 
 destructive habits ; as also certain corresponding birds of 
 other countries, the Breves of India and Australia, the Water 
 Owzel of Europe ; the Mocking Bird, Water Thrush, and 
 Ant Thrush of America. The Lyre-birds of Australia are 
 also in strong affinity to the thrushes. Here it may be re- 
 marked, that the blackbird, as well as the crow, occasionally 
 produces a white offspring, thus returning as it were to the 
 primitive type. 
 
 The meruline family have an extensive progeny in the 
 warblers (Sylviadce}, nightingale, stone-chat, blackcap, red- 
 breast, redstart, &c., which are specially inhabitants of the 
 groves and thickets, and devourers of insects. The affiliation 
 here is peculiarly distinct : M. Vieillot remarks, " a spotted 
 warbler is to my eye nothing but a thrush in miniature." 
 With the thrushes are also connected the wagtails (Mota- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 187 
 
 cillidae) ; in the American water-thrush this affinity is ex- 
 hibited very strongly. 
 
 The Chough or Red-legged Crow (Fregilus), an omnivo- 
 rous genus, of familiar habits, is, from the admitted affinity, 
 the undoubted progenitor of the Starlings and Pastors 
 (Sturnida}, a family in favour with the human species on 
 account of their intelligence, sprightliness, and fine song. 
 " They appear," says Mr. Swainson, " as a smaller kind of 
 crows, which they very much resemble in manners and 
 structure." Allied to the starlings, and probably an offshoot 
 from some local genus, are the Pique-boeufs (.Buphagidai) of 
 Africa, who give occasion to a remark of some importance in 
 the present speculation. These birds derive their food from 
 the parasite larvae contained in the skins of ruminant animals, 
 upon whose backs accordingly they take their meals, holding 
 on by their cramp-iron-like feet, and using a forceps-like 
 beak to squeeze out their food. The bird is fitted in a 
 peculiar manner for this mode of existence ; its claws are the 
 most hooked of all birds' claws, overlooking only the birds of 
 prey. It is curious thus to find a bird fitted for a life in inti- 
 mate connexion with other animals, which we know did not 
 come into existence till after the commencement of birds. 
 Upon the common theory, it would be necessary to believe 
 that the pique-bo?uf was called into existence by a special fiat 
 in connexion with the greater phenomenon of the origin of 
 ruminant animals. It almost looks like derision to ask if this 
 be credible, especially when we consider that the pique-bceuf 
 is, in reality, not a bird standing in a solitary distinction of 
 characters, but only a kind of starling adapted to special 
 habits. Yet the reigning opinion of naturalists, if true to 
 itself, can in no way escape from the absurdity to which our 
 question reduces them. 
 
 Near to the starlings, but perhaps only by collateral rela- 
 tionship, is an important genus, numerous in both Europe 
 and North America, the Larks (Alaudidd), a ground-inha- 
 biting, seed-eating, innocent race, endeared to us by the 
 habit so noted in certain species of rising high in the air, and 
 there pouring out their beautiful and joyful songs. There 
 
188 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 are many varieties of the Lark, adapted to life upon shores, 
 in fields, and amongst the woods. They possess a remarkably 
 strong conical beak for husking seeds, and which they occa- 
 sionally employ even in breaking nuts for the sake of the 
 kernels. Perhaps with the larks should be associated the 
 pipits or titlings. The Buntings (JSmbcrizicte), comprising 
 the yellow hammer, ortolan, &c., are a comparatively un- 
 tuneful variation from the larks, having a shorter bill with a 
 palatal knob, but generally similar habits, insomuch that they 
 are often caught in the same net. From them again come 
 the Sparrows (Passeres), so widely diffused and so well 
 known as also the Finches (FritogiSUdci), the latter an ex- 
 tensive genus of field birds, comprehending the goldfinch, 
 chaffinch, linnet, canary, cross-bill, &c. The most con- 
 spicuous external feature of this series of birds is a hind 
 claw of unusual length and straightness. All are conirostral. 
 The Cuckoo is from many features entitled to a place in or 
 about this portion of the corvine stirps, though its zygodactyle 
 foot has caused it to be classed by naturalists in their purely 
 artificial order of scansores or climbers. It is prevalent over 
 the old world, including Australia, and is everywhere noted 
 for its habit of placing its eggs in the nests of other birds, 
 that its young may be hatched and brought up by them. As 
 is well known, the rearing of a young cuckoo in a nest costs 
 the life of all the foster mother's own progeny. Here we 
 have another difficulty of a remarkable kind for those who 
 maintain that each species has been the result of a special fiat, 
 for how irreconcileable is it with all our ideas of immediate or 
 special arrangement that a particular species can only be con- 
 tinued by such a sacrifice. The fact is, that the cuckoo is 
 obliged by its constitutional character to stay an unusually 
 short time in the northern regions where it produces its 
 young. In our country its normal stay is only from the 
 middle of April to the beginning of July. Belated in its ap- 
 proach to the nursing regions, it is obliged to make use 
 of the nests of other birds, which it finds ready built. What 
 is worthy of notice, it employs the nests of its own nearest 
 relations, the larks, pipits, finches, sparrows, &c., an arrange- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 189 
 
 ment we may suppose to be connected in some way with the 
 early history of the whole group of species a family or clan 
 sacrifice, as it were, for the benefit of a less fortunate mem- 
 ber. Thus, it will be observed, when we take the whole 
 group together, as only variations produced by certain na- 
 tural laws from one stock, the parasitical reproduction of the 
 cuckoo sinks into that character which alone we can reconcile 
 with the rest of the providential scheme, a trivial exceptive 
 evil in the midst of much that appears, and undoubtedly is, 
 very good. 
 
 The Jay is said by Professor Macgillivray to connect the 
 crows with the Tits (Paridd), a varied genus of notedly 
 crow -like characters. 
 
 From the Nutcracker, another of the smaller crows, come 
 the Woodpeckers (Piddai), which present merely a modifica- 
 tion of the corvine structure to suit an insect-eating life 
 amidst growing timber. The woodpeckers, for this purpose, 
 have turned back the outer toe, so as to be able to climb and 
 cling to the stems of trees ; the beak has been at the same 
 time elongated, to enable them to search in the crevices of the 
 timber for insects. They are spread into all the quarters of 
 the globe. It is interesting to observe the kindred nature of 
 the parent species : the nutcracker is often observed to climb 
 the bark of trees ; it uses the beak to split open nuts ; and, 
 as in the woodpecker, the middle feathers of the tail have 
 been found worn in consequence of their climbing habits. 
 In near affinity to the woodpeckers, but perhaps only in 
 cousinship, not in descent, we must place the Creepers (Cer- 
 thiadiE), nut-hatch, hoopoe, wren, &c. ; smaller birds, which 
 have the toes in the usual arrangement, but are not less dex- 
 terous in making their way along the bark of trees, and 
 searching it for their favourite food. The Trogons of India, 
 Africa, and America, and the kindred Todies, of the first of 
 these countries and Jamaica, also appear to be of the wood- 
 pecker connexion. If we might judge by the structure of 
 the tongue, we should place the Humming Birds of America 
 in the same branch of the corvine genealogy: they eat 
 insects, although certainly more peculiarly fitted to draw an 
 
190 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 innocent aliment from the juices of those flowers whose dyes 
 they themselves rival. Corresponding to them in the Old 
 World are the Honey-eaters of Australia and Sun-birds of 
 India and Africa. Those remarkable looking birds, the 
 Hornbills (Buceridce), natives of India and Africa, are an- 
 other offshoot of the great corvine nest, most probably from 
 the Carrion crow, which, in feeding, those of Africa at least 
 resemble. They are gregarious, noisy birds, generally of 
 large size, with feet short for perching, their habit being to 
 reside in trees. The tendency of the crow tribe to noise, or 
 the exercise of voice, has led in this genus to a development 
 which forms their most conspicuous feature, namely, a hollow 
 protuberance blown out, as it were, like a bag, upon the top 
 of the upper mandible, and which serves as a sounding board 
 to increase the vociferation which the bird delights to utter. 
 In immediate descent from these birds are the Plantain- 
 eaters (Musophagidce), which, however, are restricted to 
 Africa. 
 
 The Toucans of Tropical America (Ramphastidce) are an- 
 other branch of the corvine family. They live in deep 
 forests, much after the manner of the wood-peckers, using 
 their enormous beaks and barbed tongues in searching out 
 eggs and nestlings in the hollows of trees. Singular as the 
 beak appears in this instance, it is seen to be expressly suited 
 for the objects which the bird wishes to accomplish. Let us 
 not wonder too much at a growth so extraordinary, or be too 
 eager to set it down as a feature separating the bird hope- 
 lessly from all the rest of the corvine family. Naturalists 
 daily see such modifications of this instrument, as make it very 
 easy to understand how the animal, tempted by food in pecu- 
 liar situations, came to have its beak adapted to the purpose of 
 obtaining it. The same remark will serve on our introducing 
 the Parrots (PsittacidcK) as another family of the corvine 
 stirps, some of whose special qualities, particularly garrulity 
 and imitativeness, they possess in an extraordinary degree. 
 They are distributed throughout the intertropical countries 
 of both hemispheres, as well as Australia and New Zealand. 
 Eminently arboreal in habits, in them we see the perfection 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 191 
 
 * 
 
 of the scansorial or zygodactyle form of the foot, the outer 
 toe being turned completely behind. 
 
 In the stone record there are, as is well known, few entries 
 of birds ; but such as there are bear a general correspond- 
 ence with this view of the genealogy of the class. The 
 Connecticut footsteps chiefly point to tribes which stand early 
 in the pedigree, namely, species allied in structure to the 
 snipes and plovers. Others, from their gigantic size, have 
 been thought only referable to struthious birds an equally 
 early offshoot from the aquatic order. Some few are more 
 dubiously assigned to rasorial birds. With regard to the 
 absence, here or at an earlier period, of swimming birds, let 
 it be considered that the phenomena are extremely local and 
 limited ; also, that the spot investigated is a portion of an 
 ancient shore, a haunt of wading rather than of swimming 
 birds. Recently, indeed, it has been announced that one of 
 the birds indicated by the footmarks was a swimming bird 
 a fulica, or coot ; but, as all such announcements require con- 
 firmation, little can be founded upon this, more especially as 
 a foot print resembling that of a finch was spoken of at the 
 same time. In rocks posterior to the Connecticut footmarks, 
 but within the secondary formation, occur three bird fossils, 
 one referred to the snipe family, another to the albatross, and 
 the third to the swallow ; the majority being thus applicable 
 to early portions of the genealogy. When we at length come 
 into the tertiary formation, we find, in the eocene, a vulte- 
 rine bird ; soon after which ornitholites, as they are called, 
 become of greater abundance ; and " here," says Mr. Strick- 
 land, " as in every other department of the animal kingdom, 
 we perceive a rapid approximation to the fauna, which is 
 characteristic of the period in which we live." ( 7S ) 
 
 Finally, we have to inquire into the connexions between 
 the MAMMALIA and the lower vertebrate classes. Naturalists 
 place the Birds between the Reptiles and Mammals ; yet in 
 some respects the birds are not truly intermediate. We are 
 the less to be surprised on finding that the principal mammal 
 orders appear to be immediately connected with the Reptiles, 
 while only the lowest come through the birds. As usual in 
 
192 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 transitions from class to class, which in general are the 
 leaps of the development process, the passage from reptile 
 and bird to mammal is obscure ; only indicated in a few 
 stray facts. Perhaps the fossil blank at the conclusion of the 
 cretaceous era has also helped to keep light from this subject. 
 Still we have enough to bear us out in saying, that, as the 
 fish connect with reptiles, and these with birds, so do reptiles 
 and birds together connect with mammalia ; thus placing the 
 general fact of the continued development of animal life from 
 its lowest to its highest point beyond a doubt. 
 
 The first glimpse of the mammalian type presented by 
 geological research is in the Cetiosaur, a huge reptile of the 
 Oolite, nearly allied to the marine sauria, but exhibiting in 
 the form of the larger vertebrae a clear affinity to the whale 
 tribes. In connexion with this fact, the physiologist tells us 
 that, in the manatus and dugong, specimens of these tribes, 
 there is a dense texture of bone, and an absence of medullary 
 cavities, assimilating their skeleton to the reptiles, which 
 class they further resemble in the loose connexion of the 
 bones of the head. It would thus appear, in this grand in- 
 stance, as in all others, that the starting point of the superior 
 class was in the marine and consequently earliest examples of 
 that below ; for the trunk of the genealogical tree of Being is 
 short compared with the branches. 
 
 The passage from the Birds to the mammalia connected 
 with them happens (for accident in the preservation of species 
 and the discovery of fossils is much concerned in the case) to 
 be more manifest. Somewhat unexpectedly but nature 
 must be taken as we find her it is the humblest mammalian 
 orders which come through this protracted channel. They are 
 the Digging Edentata (armadillos, ant-eaters, pangolins, &c.), 
 the Insectivora (moles, hedgehogs, &c.), and Rodentia (mice, 
 squirrels, hares). By all modern comparative anatomists it is 
 allowed that these show, in their osseous structure, imperfect 
 dentition, and humble character of brain, an affinity to birds. 
 There is, however, another order of animals, which can hardly 
 be considered as fully mammalian in character ; Implacental 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 193 
 
 Mammalia they may at the best be called ; and which are 
 even nearer to the bird character than the three orders above 
 enumerated. These are the Monotremes and Marsupials ; 
 animals now almost restricted to Australia, but which were 
 formerly more widely distributed. In the brain and other 
 parts of the organization, they are decidedly bird-like. But 
 this is not all, for, in the only surviving monotremes, the 
 ornithorhynchus and echidna, we see the bill and web-feet of 
 the swimming-bird still unchanged, the former animal being 
 a semi-rodent, and the latter a semi-insectivore. Here is a 
 gradation most remarkable, the point reached being only, as 
 it were, half way towards the higher form of existence. It is 
 also very remarkable to find amongst the more numerous 
 marsupials, genera recalling the rodent and the insectivorous 
 forms, as if these were only further advances along similar 
 lines. 
 
 Reverting to the genealogy of the higher orders of Mam- 
 malia, we find ourselves introduced by the cetiosaur and the 
 remark as to the osteology of the dugong, into the confines of 
 the Cetacea, the marine or fish-like order of their class. In 
 this group of animals, what first strikes us is that, while 
 united by a common medium of existence, and some pecu- 
 liarities fitted thereto, they are otherwise extremely various, 
 as much so indeed as all the land mammalia together. The 
 whale, the dolphin, the seal, are animals fully as different 
 from each other as the panther and the elephant, the deer and 
 monkey. Naturalists now begin to say that the Carnivora 
 (lions, bears, genets, shrews) are represented in the seals, and 
 the great pachyderms in the cetacea ; the ruminants, also, in 
 the herbivorous cetes (manatus and dugong). Obscure as is 
 our knowledge of the aquatic mammals, this relation is indu- 
 bitable, but its real character has never been read. It becomes 
 quite intelligible when we arrive at the idea of a genealogical 
 system ; but in no other way, to all appearance, can it be 
 explained. 
 
 The aquatic mammals are not properly one distinct order, 
 nor two either. They merely form the initiatory stages of 
 
194 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 certain terrestrial orders, a cross section, as it were, at the 
 bottom of those orders, and part of the composite chain by 
 which they are connected with the reptiles. 
 
 The first of these terrestrial orders is that of the Carnivora : 
 it starts in the seals (Phocidce). We see in that family genera 
 bearing a positive resemblance to both the ursine and the 
 feline tribes, and respectively called in consequence sea-bears 
 and sea-lions. It is also of importance in the case of the 
 bears, that there are genera (such as the arctic bear) geogra- 
 phically adjacent to the haunts of the phocal tribes, partly 
 similar in their semi-aquatic habits, and also akin in the low 
 (plantigrade) organization of their hind extremities. From 
 the bears startling as it may appear proceed the Canidce 
 (wolf, fox, dog), in which there is at once an improvement in 
 form (digitigrade) and an advance in intelligence. Let not 
 prejudice resist this pedigree. We must remember that the 
 dog is still a carnivorous animal, and, in the wild state, a 
 ferocious one. But the almost identity of teeth, and the 
 fact of the bear and dog having proved fruitful, are the facts 
 on which the genealogy chiefly rests. 
 
 A third carnivorous line, which may be called the Muste- 
 line, is clearly traceable from the seal called the Otaria, 
 through the sea-otter, the river otter, and so on to the shrews 
 and musteline animals in general. One, in which the suc- 
 cession is not so distinctly seen, embraces the Viverrine 
 animals, including the hyaena, procyon, genet, ichneumon, etc. 
 
 The alliance of the Pachydermata to the whales is fully 
 admitted by modern geologists, being seen in the thick and 
 naked skin, the gigantic body, massive bones, and even the 
 variable and irregular teeth, peculiar to the latter animals. 
 Here it is also important to observe that some of the 
 pachyderms nearest to the whales in bulk, as the hippopotamus 
 and rhinoceros, are partly aquatic in their habits. Even the 
 elephants and tapirs are but one step further on to terrestrial 
 habits, seeing that they chiefly haunt the savannahs and 
 jungles adjacent to great rivers. The Equidce (horse, ass, 
 quagga, onager) and the Suidce (pig, babyroussa, peccary) are 
 pachyderms applicable to inland situations, reduced in bulk, 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 195 
 
 but improved in organization. Their respective parentages 
 in the bulkier families may be left for future decision. Mean- 
 while, Professor Owen's opinion may be quoted for a con- 
 nexion between the hippopotamus and peccary through the 
 medium of the Chceropotamus, an extinct animal whose 
 remains are found in South America. 
 
 The herbivorous cetes, dugong, manatus, and walrus form 
 the basis of the great order Ruminantia, to which they are 
 allied in their gregarious habits and large bulk, as well as in 
 their food. ( 79 ) This order presents two distinct subdivisions 
 the Bovidce (aurochs, bison, buffalo, ox), leading on by such 
 intermediate forms as the ovibos or musk-ox to the sheep ; 
 and the Cervidce (elk, deer), leading on to the goat ; the 
 animals of low and alluvial grounds thus, as usual, passing 
 into smaller species adapted to more inland and elevated 
 situations. 
 
 The last mammalian order is that which Linnaeus called 
 Primates, comprehending, however, not only the monkeys 
 and lemurs, and the Cheiroptera or bats, but the Sloths 
 (Bradypodidce), which Cuvier, merely from their want of 
 certain teeth, placed elsewhere.( 80 ) For this order there 
 remains a basis in the Delphinidce, the last and smallest 
 of the cetacean tribes. This affiliation has a special sup- 
 port in the brain of the Dolphin family, which is distinctly 
 allowed to be, in proportion to general bulk, the greatest 
 amongst mammalia, next to the oran-outang and man. 
 We learn from Tiedeman, that " each of the cerebral hemi- 
 spheres is composed, as in man and the monkey tribe, of 
 three lobes an anterior, a middle, and a posterior ;" and 
 these hemispheres " present much more numerous circumvo- 
 lutions and grooves than those of any other animal." Here 
 it might be rash to found anything upon the ancient accounts 
 of the dolphin its familiarity with man, and its helping him 
 in shipwreck and various marine disasters, although it is diffi- 
 cult to believe these stories to be altogether without some 
 basis in fact. There is no doubt, however, that the dolphin 
 evinces a predilection for human society, and charms the ma- 
 riner by the gambols which it performs beside his vessel. 
 o 2 
 
196 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 The first steps from this aquatic family are perhaps riot to be 
 seen upon earth. It appears as if we had to take up the lines in 
 decidedly inland species the Monke} T s and Sloths, which are 
 sylvan ; the Bats, which are partially aerial ; and man, who is 
 geographically universal. For the sloths alone, do we discern 
 any trace of intermediate species. These appear distinctly 
 enough in the fossil megatherium and megalonyx. ( 81 ) The 
 want of the rest is not a formidable difficulty, for it appears, 
 generally, that the species hovering between sea and land, or 
 those adapted to live upon shores and low grounds, are most 
 apt to become extinct. Hence it is that the tapirine and ele- 
 phantine animals are visibly fading from the face of the 
 earth. Thus has the anoplothere perished, while the llama 
 survives. It cannot fail to be remarked that the geological 
 history of the mammalia is, as far as we obtain from it any 
 distinct ideas, in conformity with these views regarding their 
 classification. The marsupials and aquatics appear early, 
 even before the cretaceous era. After the long blank which 
 that formation represents, what are the animals found predo- 
 minant in the beginning of the tertiary ? The great pachy- 
 derms and cetacea, particularly manatidae. The dog, horse, 
 and other culminating species of the various lines, come com 
 paratively late, the sheep and goat not at all ; man also is ab- 
 sent, till the most recent formations. 
 
 We cannot but regard with profound interest the question 
 respecting our own immediate ancestry. The mind immedi- 
 ately refers to the simial family, whose form, size of brain, 
 and general characters make so manifest an approach to our 
 own. Yet it may be doubted if the particular species whence 
 the human family was derived, has ever come under the at- 
 tention of naturalists. It seems, judging from analogy, as if 
 a larger species than any as yet described were required for 
 this place in the tree of being. It may here be observed that 
 of all the reptilian orders, the batrachian is that which has best 
 pretensions to a place in the origin of the Primates. " It is 
 singular," says Dr. Roget, " that the frog, though so low in 
 the scale of vertebrated animals, should bear a striking resem- 
 blance to the human conformation in its organs of progressive 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 197 
 
 motion." It is the only animal besides man with a calf to its 
 leg. It evidently " is making," says Dr. Roget. " an approxi- 
 mation to the higher orders of mammalia." The frog, how- 
 ever, is but a humble offshoot of the main line terminating 
 in the Primates. There is something more like a lineal 
 predecessor of the order in the Labyrinthodon of Owen, that 
 massive batrachian, which leaves its hand-like footsteps in the 
 Xew Red Sandstone, and then is seen no more. Not for no- 
 thing is it that we start at the picture of that strange 
 impression, ghost of anticipated humanity, for apparently 
 it really is so. In these things the superficial thinker will 
 only see matter of ridicule : the large-hearted and truly 
 devout man, who puts nothing of nature away from him, 
 will, on the contrary, discover in them interesting traces of 
 the ways of God to man, and a deeper breathing of the 
 lesson, that whatever lives is to him kindred. 
 
 Our view of the animal kingdom is now completed, and I 
 venture to claim for it the character of being, with all ne- 
 cessary and unavoidable imperfections, the only approach yet 
 made to a truly natural classification. Proceeding every- 
 where upon obvious affinities, most of them admitted by 
 zoologists, or else upon equally acknowledged facts in the 
 doctrine of embryology, it presents an arrangement in almost 
 every point conformable to palaeontology, or the geological 
 history of animals upon earth. Nay more ; so far is that his- 
 tory from being irreconcilable with any assumed progress of 
 animated being from simple to complex forms, that I would 
 now say, any discoveries violently altering it, or doing more 
 than filling up its blanks, would be at issue with the true plan 
 of being, and a source of doubt with regard to the whole of 
 our hypothesis of creation. 
 
 It now appears that the animal kingdom (and by analogy 
 the vegetable also) is composed of series of forms, each usually 
 taking an origin in the lowest sub-kingdom, and afterwards 
 passing through higher grades, but not in every case through 
 all, until the highest is reached. It appears that the grand 
 matrix of organic being is the sea, that what may be called 
 trunk lines pass through this medium as high as the mam- 
 
198 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 malian type, and that the terrestrial families may all be re- 
 garded as branches of these marine lines, though in some in- 
 stances a passage from one class form to another has taken 
 place on land. Two principles are thus seen at work in the 
 production of the organic tenants of the earth first, a gesta- 
 tive development pressing on through the grades of organiza- 
 tion, and bringing out particular organs necessary for new 
 fields of existence ; secondly, a variative power re-acted upon 
 by external conditions, and working to minor effects, though 
 these may sometimes be hardly distinguishable from the 
 other. Everywhere along the central scale of organization, 
 the land has been, as it were, a temptation or provocation to 
 new and superior forms adapted for inhabiting it. We might 
 almost regard the progression as the result of an aspiration 
 towards new and superior fields of existence, as from the deep 
 sea to the shallow or river-embouchure, from the shore to the 
 bank, from that again to the higher ground in the interior.. 
 He may not yet be held as a very fanciful naturalist who 
 would regard the megatherium as eager to climb the tree 
 which he could only shake, and thus producing a progeny 
 fitted to do that which was the object of his wishes, or the 
 rock-nose whale, which loves to rest its head on rocks beside 
 the beach, as wishful of that mode of life which was at length 
 vouchsafed to a more highly developed descendant. Such too 
 may be found to be the true principle of perfectibility in na- 
 ture a continual, though it may be an irregularly shown 
 tendency to press on to better and better powers, an indefi- 
 nite improveableness, which may work, as in seconds, in the 
 individual, or strike hours in the species. 
 
 The present view of the Genealogical Classification of Ani- 
 mals was nearly completed, when my attention was drawn 
 to certain appearances, as if the arrangement had what may 
 be called a numerical foundation. Within the last twenty- 
 five years, Mr. Macleay originated a theory of this kind, 
 which has been wrought out by Messrs. Swainson, Vigors, 
 and other naturalists. The prevalent opinion amongst them 
 was, that the true divisions and subdivisions were in groups of 
 five : thus, five sub-kingdoms, five classes of vertebrata, five 
 
DISTRIBUTION OP ORGANISMS. 199 
 
 orders of the class mammalia, and so on, the general character 
 of each class being represented in a corresponding order, and 
 the same character being further reflected even in the fami- 
 lies or genera into which the orders were subdivided. There 
 were striking appearances of a basis of truth in this theory, 
 though, in the excessive ardour of its first advocates, it was 
 carried to a pitch of refinement in which nature was lost sight 
 of, and the whole was greatly marred by the notion that 
 all the groups arranged themselves in circles. Acknow- 
 ledging the value of the theory as, with all its faults, a great 
 step in philosophical zoology, I shall proceed to show what 
 appeared to me as true grounds for some such arrangement 
 of the animal kingdom. 
 
 To me, as to Mr. Macleay and his followers, the Birds 
 present the clearest traces of a determinate grouping, with an 
 analogous sub-grouping. We see three great divisions ; first, 
 birds of solitary, predaceous, carnivorous habits ; second, birds 
 of gregarious habits, accustomed to walking on the ground, 
 slow of movement, large of bulk, generally granivorous, and 
 harmless ; third, birds which are, generally speaking, omni- 
 vorous, rapid of movement, comparatively of small bulk, 
 not merely gregarious, but social, often marked by garru- 
 lity, imitative power, cunning, and mischievousness. The 
 eagle and vulture mark the first ; the common fowl, pigeons, 
 and game birds, the second ; the crow, pie, parrot, thrush, 
 lark, sparrow, the third. As for sub-groupings, it would be 
 rash to attempt precision ; but certainly in the second, the 
 geese, cranes, gallinae, and pigeons, with their peculiarly in- 
 nocent characters, might stand as representatives of the group 
 itself, while the more carnivorous ducks, herons, and plovers 
 appear in analogy to the predaceous or first group, and the 
 rails to the third. In the third group, again, the three are 
 not less strikingly represented by the following in succession 
 the shrikes and warblers, the larks and sparrows, the 
 parrots, toucans, pies, starlings, &c. 
 
 If we start from the birds with these three general charac- 
 ters in our mind, we shall find that the reptiles fall under 
 them in this order; the Sauria the Chelonia the Ba- 
 
200 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 trachia. So do the Mammalia, after we have laid aside those 
 which appear as lateral offshoots through the birds. They 
 rank thus : the Carnivora the Herbivora (using this term to 
 include pachyderms, equidae, and ruminants) and the Pri- 
 mates. Thus, again, analyse the Herbivora, and it seems al- 
 lowable to regard such animals as the pig and hippopotamus 
 as representing the carnivores, the ruminants as representing 
 the innocent group, and the equidae, with their rapid move- 
 ments and familiar character, as standing appositely to the 
 third. So also, in the third, the bats the sloths and the 
 apes appear in precisely the same series of relations. 
 Whether there be still another grade of sub-analogies, I will 
 not take it upon me in any manner to pronounce. 
 
 It may here be remarked that this system is not affected by 
 any determination which may be arrived at with regard to 
 the genealogy of the birds, for these, whether descended from 
 one order of reptiles or all three, would exhibit the same 
 groupings. It may also be remarked that their supposed de- 
 scendants, the Edentata, Rodentia, and Insectivora, conform 
 to the relations as thus collocated. The Fish must not yet 
 be speculated upon ; but in the Mollusca, I am tempted to 
 think that the relations apply in this order Cephalopoda 
 G asteropoda Cochifera. 
 
 Even with those relations here indicated, we acquire first 
 the idea of three great strands of organic being, each composed 
 of three inferior strands, respectively representing the princi- 
 pal lines, and which probably were the true genealogical 
 series of our system. Verily, it would give us a curious 
 conception of organic nature, if we could satisfy ourselves 
 that, like chemistry, it had a mysterious foundation in mathe- 
 matical proportions. Threes under threes, each subordinate 
 three reflecting the trinity to which it belongs, and all others ! 
 Such an idea is obviously favourable to the development 
 theory, as arguing a unity in animated nature, and the de- 
 finite character of its entire constitution. It suggests how, 
 under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary 
 and accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. 
 The Natural appears to sink into and merge in a higher Arti- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 201 
 
 ficial. To adopt a comparison more apt than dignified, we 
 may be said to be placed here as insects in a garden of the 
 old style. Our first unassisted view is limited, and we per- 
 ceive only the irregularities of the minute surface, and single 
 shrubs which appear arbitrarily scattered. But our view at 
 length extending and becoming more comprehensive, we 
 begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and 
 arbours placed symmetrically, and that the whole is an assem- 
 blage of parts mutually reflective. ' It can scarcely be neces- 
 sary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to 
 the origination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind 
 is a humble and faint representation. The insects of the gar- 
 den, supposing them to be invested with reasoning power, and 
 aware how artificial are their own works, might, of course, 
 very reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artifi- 
 cial object, the garden was the work of some maker or 
 artificer. And so also, when we attain a knowledge of the 
 artificiality which is at the basis of nature, must we conclude 
 that nature is wholly the production of a being resembling ^ 
 but infinitely greater than ourselves. 
 
 By the same light we are enabled to see more clearly than 
 ever the providential arrangement with respect to the various 
 characters of animals ; some to draw nutriment directly from 
 the vegetable kingdom ; others to keep the numbers of these 
 in check, and prevent their carcasses from cumbering the 
 earth to be, in fact, a medium for returning their constituent 
 substances to the atmosphere from which these were originally 
 extracted by the vegetation ; others again destined to a higher 
 and more intelligent enjoyment than either, and turning 
 animal as well as vegetable substances to their use. It is 
 most interesting also to trace by this light the perseverance of 
 characters and habits, and even of points in organization, 
 from grade to grade. Travelling in the east, we might see 
 the gavial acting as the scavenger of the Ganges, and the dog 
 serving the same purpose in the neglected streets of the great 
 cities : the latter, a descendant of the line of being of which 
 the former is an offshoot, merely serves on land the purpose 
 served by his relative in the river. The vulture corresponds 
 
202 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 amongst birds, and the shark amongst fishes, to the dog 
 amongst the mammalian carnivora : behold all of these animals 
 furnished alike with the most acute powers of smell, for the 
 discovery of their prey. A living naturalist speaks thus of 
 the resemblance of the parrots to the monkeys : " There can 
 be little doubt that the parrots, among birds, emulate the 
 monkeys among placentals : they eat all kinds of food they 
 can procure ; they obtain it in the same situations ; they seek 
 it in the same way, by climbing, for a parrot actually 
 climbs like a monkey; it does not leap or run like other 
 birds ; but, like a monkey, or more especially a lemur, climbs 
 slowly and solemnly from bough to bough : its toes are 
 placed two and two, presenting an exact analogy to the op- 
 posable thumb of the Primates ; and its foot is constantly used 
 as a hand for conveying food to the mouth : its chattering 
 voice is also similar, and in the gift of speech it rivals man 
 himself: its large brain and peculiar tact in imitation are still 
 additional similarities. I should, therefore, place the genus 
 Psittacus as one of the Primates among birds. ( 82 ) The ex- 
 planation is easy : the monkeys either are the descendants of 
 the line which at an earlier period gave parrots, or the par- 
 rots come from a sub-line representing the monkeys in their 
 greater line. In the same way, the pig is the relative or ana- 
 logue of the duck, the bullock of the turkey, the squirrel of 
 the monkey, the furtive springing cat of the equally furtive 
 springing serpent, and so forth. Strange thus to trace in the 
 humble and ancient animal a prophecy of the higher and 
 more recent ; the cephalopod, for example, foreshowing the 
 shark the shark the saurian, the saurian the vulture and 
 mammalian carnivore. Equally curious to see the migratory 
 habits of the chelonia reproduced in the migratory habits 
 which attach both to birds and to the ruminants : thus the 
 voyage of three thousand miles which the turtle will make in 
 order to lay her eggs on Ascension island, the vast vernal 
 flight of the swallow from Africa to England for incubation, 
 the roaming disposition of the hyperborean deer and the Ame- 
 rican bison, are all kindred phenomena, comprehended under 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 203 
 
 one law of their gracious Creator : each race and sub-race 
 true from first to last to its allotted instincts. 
 
 A result of very profound interest may be expected from 
 the perfect development of this view of the system of nature ; 
 it will enable us to see with tolerable distinctness the status 
 of man as one of the vessels of life. Even from the sketch 
 now before us we may draw some curious inferences. It 
 appears that the stirps which terminates in the Primates is 
 one which may be considered as central between the other 
 two, combining- characters from both, along with charac- 
 ters of its own. Its central sub -line is eminently eclectic, 
 and particularly in its food, uniting the carnivorous instincts 
 of the bats, on the one hand, with the phytophagous habits of 
 the sloths, on the other. Sociality, vocality or the use of voice, 
 a prehensive use of the extremities, imitativeness, drollery, 
 sagacity, all form characteristics generally applicable to this 
 line of animals. They are, in the reptilian grade, and 
 perhaps in inferior grades also, rather below than above their 
 fellows; but in the mammalian stage, they suddenly ascend 
 to a pre-eminence, not by superior strength, but by greater 
 relative magnitude of brain, by agility, and by the use of the 
 hand. The signal superiority of the human species is thus 
 prepared for and betokened in the immediately preceding 
 portions of the line : it might have been seen, ere man existed, 
 that a remarkable creature was coming upon the earth. The 
 advance, nevertheless, which man makes above his immediate 
 predecessors is very great ; the highest of these cannot rank 
 above an infant of our species in sagacity or morale. 
 
 This advance is no isolated fact. In each of the other sub- 
 lines, there is what may be called a crowning species, greatly 
 superior to its immediate ancestry, and these are the most 
 distinguished of all animals. In the herbivorous stirps, the 
 sub-carnivorous line is topped by the pig, the sub -herbi- 
 vorous by the sheep, the sub-central by the horse. In the 
 carnivorous stirps, the sub-central is topped by the dog. The 
 horse and dog, so eminent for their sagacity and usefulness, 
 are in this peculiar manner analogues to man, whom they 
 
204 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 serve so faithfully. A signal superiority, however, belongs 
 to him as the centre and apex of all ; the undoubted king and 
 lord of this portion of animated nature. His greatness con- 
 sidering him merely as a unit in the animal kingdom lies 
 primarily in the concentration of qualities which he derives 
 from this situation. He is not an animal solely herbivorous, 
 or solely carnivorous ; solely innocent, or solely destructive. 
 He has all these characters and habits, with the addition 
 of others proper to his own family of being. There is great 
 virtue in this principle of concentration, or, as it may rather 
 be called, this universality of character. We see that an in- 
 tensity of it marks all the greatest individuals of our species, 
 such as Shakspeare and Scott, of whom it has been observed 
 that they must have possessed within themselves, not only the 
 poet, but the warrior, the statesman, the philosopher, and the 
 man of affairs, and who, moreover, appear to have had the mild 
 and manly, the moral and impulsive parts of our nature, in 
 the finest balance. 
 
 When the naturalists of modern times began to inquire 
 into the geographical distribution of plants and animals, they 
 quickly found that the prevalent notion of their dispersion 
 from one common centre was untenable. From facts ob- 
 served by them, they have latterly concluded that, so far 
 from this being the case, there are many provinces of the 
 earth's surface occupied by plants and animals almost wholly pe- 
 culiar, and which must accordingly have had a separate origin. 
 Professor Henslow, of Cambridge, speaks of no fewer than 
 forty-five such provinces for the vegetable kingdom alone. 
 
 A botanical or zoological province is generally isolated in 
 some manner, either as an island in the midst of a wide 
 ocean as, for example, St. Helena or the Isle de Bourbon 
 or as a portion of a continent separated from the rest either 
 by a range of high mountains, or by the boundaries of a 
 climate. It is also found that elevation of position comes to 
 the same effect with regard to vegetation as advance in lati- 
 tude ; so that, as we ascend a lofty mountain in a tropical 
 country, we gradually pass through zones exhibiting the 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 205 
 
 plants of kinds appropriate to temperate and arctic regions. 
 Even the neighbourhood of a salt marsh, however remotely 
 placed amongst grounds of a different kind, exhibits plants 
 appropriate to such a soil. 
 
 Fewer distinct zoological regions are enumerated, but 
 perhaps only in consequence of imperfect observation. Here, 
 however, the evidences against communication of organisms 
 from one region to another are even more decided. If, how- 
 ever, it were surmised that the organisms of isolated regions 
 had been communicated from other countries, and merely 
 modified in their new abodes, the disproof of the conjec- 
 ture would be more positive with regard to the zoology of 
 the question than the botany. For, while it might appear 
 possible that seeds had been floated even five hundred miles 
 to a new soil like that of the Isle de Bourbon, how can we 
 account, by such a supposition, for the existence there of bats, 
 reptiles, and other animals, the progenitors of which could 
 never have swam so far for the sake of a change of residence ? 
 This island, be it remarked, is of volcanic origin, and known 
 to have become dry land at a comparatively recent period. 
 
 The two great continents of the earth are the first zoolo- 
 gical divisions of its surface. The animals as well as plants 
 of the old and new world are specifically different, with very 
 few exceptions; that is, they are different in the degree 
 which naturalists agree to consider as sufficient to establish 
 distinct species. But even North and South America pre- 
 sent different animals. We also find that the animals in the 
 north and south of Asia are different, and that most of the 
 African species are distinct from those of Asia. 
 
 The differences are in some instances so great as to be held 
 by naturalists as generic. Beyond this point, however, there 
 are parities or indentities. We see, for instance, in all these 
 various regions, feline animals, ruminants, pachyderms, 
 rodents, etc. Thus, for the lion and tiger of Asia, we have a 
 different lion and the panther in Africa, the jaguar in South 
 America, and the puma ranging from Brazil to Canada. 
 Instead of the elk of Northern Europe and the argali of 
 Siberia, we have, in North America, the moose deer and 
 
206 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 mountain sheep. Asia and Africa have elephants, to which 
 the extinct mastodon of Northern Europe and the extinct 
 mammoth of North America are parallels ; and it now 
 appears that even the horse, of which there are several varie- 
 ties in the old world, was abundant in the new, at a period 
 long antecedent to the introduction of the present breed by 
 the colonists. Australia has its emeu, Africa its ostrich, and 
 America her rhea, all similar animals, though specifically 
 different. We find simiae planted in three great regions 
 Southern Asia, Western Africa, and equinoctial America, 
 but all of different character, those of America being pecu- 
 liarly distinct in their want of the opposable thumb and of 
 callosities in the seat, as also in the use of the tail as a pre- 
 hensile instrument. Australia has only a few very unim- 
 portant mammalian animals of her own besides the marsupials, 
 which are represented by a few species in America ; but to 
 the southern part of the latter continent are confined the 
 whole family of the sloths. Africa, in like manner, has exclu- 
 sive possession of the giraffe. To North America belongs a 
 great number of genera of birds quite peculiar to it, and also 
 a greater number and variety of the rodents than are found 
 in other parts of the earth. Similar facts could be stated 
 respecting other classes of animals ; but I limit attention to 
 the mammalia, as being the most restricted in number and 
 the best known. 
 
 Some principles governing the parity and variation of the 
 organisms spread over different regions have been observed. 
 It is found, for instance, that there is more uniformity 
 between two continents which are both in the north or south 
 hemisphere, albeit divided by wide oceans, than between two 
 portions of one continent extending into both of these hemi- 
 spheres. North America is zoologically less allied to South 
 America than it is to Northern Europe. An island, however 
 far apart, is apt to show zoological features reflective of those 
 of the nearest continent. Two countries, again, divided only 
 by a narrow sea, have usually the same flora. 
 
 Some principle affecting the development of the higher 
 animals can also be detected, in connexion with geological 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 207 
 
 chronology. Startling as it may appear, we are now assured 
 that the present great continent comprising Europe, Asia, 
 and Africa, has been, with minor changes in the relative 
 position of sea and land, one theatre of organic being since 
 the commencement of the existence of land animals upon the 
 surface of the earth ; that is to say, there has been, on one 
 part or another of this geographical area, an uninterrupted 
 chain of living forms from an early period in the secondary 
 formation. This is the zoological province whose history is 
 presented by the geologists ; it is the oldest we are acquainted 
 with. There are, however, some isolated regions which are 
 known with certainty to have been in a condition of dry 
 land for a less space of time. Such are the volcanic islands, 
 of which the Isle of Bourbon is an example. Such also are 
 the Galapagos islands, placed in the Pacific, above five hun- 
 dred miles from South America. Now it is remarkable 
 in such regions to find the mammalia either wholly wanting 
 or in very small numbers. 
 
 Australia itself a fifth great section of the habitable 
 globe appears to be one of these regions of an incomplete 
 zoology. It is well known to have no native mammalia 
 besides that humble implacental kind which are nearly 
 peculiar to it, and a few rodents and bats. Professor Owen 
 remarks how the fishes of the oolitic era acrodus psammodus, 
 etc. with the contemporary mollusks (trigoniae and terebra- 
 tulae), which served these fishes for food, are represented in 
 the living cestraceon which swims the Australian seas, with 
 exactly the same sea mollusks to yield them sustenance. 
 "Araucariae and cycadeous plants likewise," he says, " flourish 
 on the Australian continent, where marsupial quadrupeds 
 abound, and thus appear to complete a picture of an ancient 
 condition of the earth's surface, which has been superseded 
 in our hemisphere by other strata and a higher type of mam- 
 malian organization/Y 83 ) 
 
 Such being the facts of the case, we are to inquire whether 
 they best agree with the hypothesis of an origin of organisms 
 by special Divine exertion, or that of their origination in 
 Divine power working in the manner of natural law ; and 
 
208 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 
 
 also, if the latter supposition appear preferable, how far the 
 facts agree with the plan of animated nature delineated in 
 the preceding pages. 
 
 It is remarkable at the very first that there is any variety 
 of species in different regions, more especially as the species 
 of one region usually thrive when transplanted to another of 
 generally similar character in point of soil and climate. Had 
 organisms been produced by special attention taking this 
 according to any ideas we can form of it we might rather 
 have expected to see identical plants in similar countries. It 
 will not avail here to attribute the variation to the cultivation 
 of variety as a principle on the part of the Divine Disposer, 
 for the differences evidently follow no such principle, being 
 of various intensities in near and in remote situations. In this 
 consideration, there is a great obstacle to the reception of the 
 special-exertion hypothesis. It seems much more likely that 
 organisms took their rise in germs springing from inorganic 
 elements ; which germs being different in accordance with 
 such slight local differences in the combinations of the ele- 
 ments as physical studies inform us of, and the external con- 
 ditions attending their development being also locally diffe- 
 rent, the resulting vessels of life were various accordingly. 
 Such variations of result are exactly of a piece with hundreds 
 of other simply natural events for example, the difference 
 of animals born at one birth ; and similar natural causes are 
 therefore presumable for them. 
 
 The facts respecting the geographical distribution of 
 organisms are in perfect harmony with the plan of their 
 origin, which, from the geological history, the principles of 
 organic development, and their external affinities, has here 
 been sketched. That plan necessitates the facts of distribu- 
 tion, which the other hypothesis does not. First, a develop- 
 ment of vegetable organisms, we shall say, taking place in the 
 sea, it is exactly what we would expect that they should 
 spread upon the neighbouring shores in every direction, and 
 that we should thus, for example, have one flora surrounding 
 the Mediterranean, which is the fact. So it is also likely 
 that islands should botanically and zoologically partake of the 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 209 
 
 character of the neighbouring continents. In regions, on the 
 other hand, sufficiently distant to be involved in the influence 
 of diverse foci of life, we are to expect differences propor- 
 tioned to the difference of original elements, and also of con- 
 ditions attending the development of the various lines ; there 
 we may only expect to see such ultimate parities attained as 
 those between the emeu of Australia and the rhea of America, 
 or the jaguar and puma of the latter continent and the tiger of 
 Asia. Here it is important, to observe that the cetacea and 
 the marine birds in the neighbourhood of the different conti- 
 nents, present less variation than do the land mammals and 
 birds : they have advanced less way along the lines, and have 
 been less exposed to the conditions productive of external 
 variations. In the case of a well-defined zoological region, 
 such as the northern parts of North America, we see the 
 indigenous animals expressly confined to those families which 
 our plan sets forth as springing from the marine tribes 
 above adverted to. There is the polar bear, with his 
 various progeny, the brown bear, black bear, the wolf, fox, 
 and dog ; these from a phocal ancestry. The sea-otter, 
 sprung from an allied stock, gives birth to the few musteline 
 animals which dwell in these dreary regions. Then we have 
 herbivorous cetes, giving rise to the moose deer and musk 
 ox, these again being the progenitors of the goat and sheep. 
 And finally, we have the unusually numerous rodents from 
 the aquatic birds, which nowhere are seen in greater numbers 
 than on the borders of the Arctic Ocean. Such, with the 
 mole, is the whole show of mammalia in this province : it is, 
 it will be observed, of a limited kind ; but it is interesting to 
 remark that it presents nearly all the animals of that class, 
 which we have supposed from their affinities to be descended 
 from the marine families of which there is such abundance 
 upon the adjacent ocean. And, supposing this ocean to be 
 the berceau of these land animals, we can easily see why they 
 should be more akin to the terrestrial mammalia of Northern 
 Europe than to those of South America. The Northern Ocean, 
 spreading in one character of climate along the confines of 
 the two first regions, enables a set of maritime animals which 
 p 
 
210 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 
 
 may have come into existence in any part of it, to spread into 
 the two continents alike the same bear, nearly the same 
 ruminants, and so forth ; but, if the Southern Ocean have 
 possessed, as is likely from its distance, a different develop- 
 ment of animal life from the Northern, and be supposed as 
 sending off terrestrial animals in like manner into South 
 America, the interposition of several great zones of different 
 climate stands forth as a sufficient reason why there should 
 not have been the same communication of zoological forms in 
 that case to the hyperborean seas, as there was from those 
 laving North America to those which dash upon Scandinavia, 
 Russia, and Siberia. 
 
 The hypothesis is equally applicable to the imperfect de- 
 velopments of li/e upon the more recently raised lands, such 
 as the Galapagos islands and Australia. Development is a 
 matter of time, and in the case of these regions, the full time 
 has not yet elapsed. It is therefore exactly what we might 
 expect, upon the natural hypothesis, that, in these regions, ani- 
 mal life should have yet hardly reached the mammalian stage, 
 the point which was attained in our elder and greater province 
 about the time of the oolite. ( 84 ) But no rational cause for 
 this imperfect zoological show can be presented in consonance 
 with the plan of special exertions. Its advocates can only 
 refer to some vague assumption regarding the Divine will, to 
 which it is treason against judgment to come, while a single 
 surmise of natural procedure remains unexhausted. 
 
211 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 THE human race is known to consist of numerous nations, 
 displaying considerable differences of external form and 
 colour, and speaking in general different languages. This 
 has been the case since the commencement of written record. 
 It is also ascertained that the external peculiarities of parti- 
 cular nations do not change rapidly. While a people remain 
 upon one geographical area, and under the influence of one 
 set of conditions, they always exhibit a tendency to persistency 
 of type, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various 
 type is usually obliterated in a few generations. Numerous 
 as the varieties are, they have all been found classifiable 
 under five leading ones: 1. The Caucasian, or Indo-Euro- 
 pean, which extends from India into Europe and Northern 
 Africa ; 2. The Mongolian, which occupies Northern and 
 Eastern Asia ; 3. The Malayan, which extends from the 
 Ultra- Gangetic Peninsula into the numerous islands of the 
 South Seas and Pacific ; 4. The Negro, chiefly confined to 
 Africa ; 5. The aboriginal American. Each of these is dis- 
 tinguished by certain general features of so marked a kind, 
 as to suggest to many inquirers that they have had distinct 
 or independent origins. Of these peculiarities, colour is the 
 most conspicuous : the Caucasians are generally white, the 
 Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans 
 red. The opposition of two of these in particular, white and 
 p 2 
 
212 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seems almost 
 necessary to suppose separate origins. Of late years, how- 
 ever, the whole of this question has been subjected to a rigor- 
 ous investigation by a British philosopher, who has been 
 remarkably successful in adducing evidence that the human 
 race might have had one origin, for anything that can be 
 inferred from external peculiarities. 
 
 It appears from this inquiry,( 85 ) that colour and other 
 physiological characters are of a more superficial and acci- 
 dental nature than was at one time supposed. One fact is at 
 the very first extremely startling, that there are nations, such 
 as the inhabitants of Hindostan, apparently one in descent, 
 which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all 
 shades of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those 
 important features on which much stress has been laid. 
 Some other facts, which may be stated in brief terms, are 
 scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations, 
 that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, 
 Mandingoes, and Kafirs, whose features and limbs are as 
 elegant as those of the best European nations. While we 
 have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course 
 of generations, the converse may be held as established, for 
 there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in 
 Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other 
 inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to show the 
 possibility of a natural transition by generation from the 
 black to the white complexion, and from the white to the 
 black. True whites (apart from Albinoes) are not unfre- 
 quently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this 
 singularity is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one 
 authentic instance of a set of perfectly black children being 
 born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had 
 intermingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan, 
 where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general 
 have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any 
 other tribes of the same nation. ( 86 ) 
 
 The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect 
 in modifying the human figure in the course of generations, 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 213 
 
 and this even in its osseous structure. About two hundred 
 years ago, a number of people were driven by a barbarous 
 policy from the counties of Antrim and Down, in Ireland, 
 towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since been 
 settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances even for 
 Ireland ; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar 
 features of the most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with 
 large open mouths, depressed noses, high cheek bones, and 
 bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature. 
 These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the 
 outward marks of a low and barbarous condition all over the 
 world ; it is particularly seen in the Australian aborigines. 
 On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England 
 is very remarkable, being, in the main, as clearly a result of 
 good external conditions. " Coarse, unwholesome, and ill- 
 prepared food," says Buffon, " makes the human race degene- 
 rate. All those people who live miserably are ugly and ill- 
 made. Even in France, the country people are not so beau- 
 tiful as those who live in towns ; and I have often remarked 
 that in those villages where the people are richer and better 
 fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and 
 have better countenances." He might have added, that ele- 
 gant and commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable 
 clothing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as 
 health requires, co-operate with food in increasing the elegance 
 of a race of human beings. 
 
 Variations also arise, through inexplicable causes, amidst 
 a state of things generally permanent. They tend most to 
 occur among the humbler families of plants and animals, but 
 also frequently take place in the very highest. A notable 
 instance of variety- production in an animal family by no 
 means low, is often referred to, as having happened under the 
 observation of persons still alive to attest it. On a New 
 England farm there originated, in the latter part of the last 
 century, a variety of sheep with unusually short legs, which 
 was kept up by breeding, on account of the convenience in 
 that country of having sheep which are unable to leap over 
 low fences. The starting and maintaining a breed of cattle, 
 
214 EAKLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 that is, a variety marked by some desirable peculiarity, are 
 familiar to a large class of persons. It appears only neces- 
 sary, when a variety has been thus produced, that a union 
 should take place between individuals similarly characterized, 
 and that the conditions under which it has been produced 
 should be persisted in, in order to establish it. Early in the 
 last century, a man named Lambert was born in Suffolk, 
 with semi-horny excrescences, of about half an inch long, 
 thickly growing all over his body. The peculiarity was 
 transmitted to his children, and was last heard of in a third 
 generation. The peculiarity of six fingers on the hand and 
 six toes on the feet, appears in like manner in families which 
 have no record nor tradition of such a peculiarity having 
 affected them at any former period, and it is then sometimes 
 seen to descend through several generations. It was Mr. 
 Lawrence's opinion, that a pair, in which both parties were 
 so distinguished, might be the progenitors of a new variety 
 of the race, who would be thus marked in all future time. 
 We have but obscure notions of the laws which regulate this 
 variability within specific limits ; but we see them continually 
 operating, and they are obviously favourable to the supposi- 
 tion that all the great families of men may have been of one 
 stock. 
 
 The tendency of the modern study of the languages of 
 nations is to the same point. The last fifty years have seen 
 this study elevated to the character of a science, and the light 
 which it throws upon the history of mankind is of a most 
 remarkable nature. 
 
 Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the 
 earth's languages into a kind of classification : a number 
 bearing a considerable resemblance to eq,ch other, and in 
 general geographically near, are styled a group or sub-family ; 
 several groups, again, are associated as a family, with regard 
 to more general features of resemblance. Six families are 
 spoken of. 
 
 The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geogra- 
 phical limits with those which have been assigned to that 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 215 
 
 variety of mankind which generally shows a fair complexion, 
 called the Caucasian variety. It may be said to commence 
 in India, and thence to stretch through Persia into Europe, 
 the whole of which it occupies, excepting Hungary, the 
 Basque provinces of Spain, and Finland. Its sub-families 
 are the Sanskrit, or ancient language of India, the Per- 
 sian, the Slavonic, Celtic, Gothic, and Pelasgian. The Sla- 
 vonic includes the modern languages of Russia and Poland. 
 Under the Gothic, are (1) the Scandinavian tongues, the 
 Norske, Swedish, and Danish ; and (2) the Teutonic, to 
 which belong the modern German, the Dutch, and our own 
 Anglo-Saxon. I give the name of Pelagian to the group 
 scattered along the north shores of the Mediterranean, the 
 Greek and Latin, including the modifications of the latter 
 under the names of Italian, Spanish, &c. The Celtic was, 
 from two to three thousand years ago, the speech of a con- 
 siderable tribe dwelling in Western Europe ; but these have 
 since been driven before superior nations into a few corners, 
 and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland, 
 Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France. The 
 Gaelic of Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the 
 only living branches of this sub-family of languages. 
 
 The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds, 
 identity of words, and identity of grammatical forms ; the 
 latter being now generally considered as the most important 
 towards the argument. When we inquire into the first kind 
 of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European family, 
 we are surprised at the great number of common terms which 
 exist among them, and these referring to such primary ideas 
 as to leave no doubt of their having all been derived from 
 a common source. Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine 
 hundred words common to the Sanskrit and other languages 
 of the same family. In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find 
 several which require no sort of translation to an English 
 reader, as pader, mader, sunu, dokhter, brader, mand, vidhava; 
 likewise asthi, a bone, (Greek, osteon ;) denta, a tooth, (Latin, 
 dens, dentis ,) eyeumen, the eye ; brouwa, the eye-brow, 
 
216 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 (German, braue ;) nasa, the nose ; karu, the hand, (Gr. cheir?) 
 genu, the knee, (Lat. genu ,) ped, the foot, (Lat. pen, pedis ;) 
 hrti, the heart ; jecur, the liver, (Lat. jecur ;) stara, a star ; 
 gela, cold, (Lat. g&UL, ice ;) aghni, fire, (Lat. ig-ww ;) dhara, 
 the earth, (Lat. term, Gaelic, tir ;) arrivi, a river; wow, a ship, 
 (Gr. waws, Lat. navis ,-) g-Aaw, a cow ; sarpam, a serpent. 
 
 The inferences from these verbal coincidences were con- 
 firmed in a striking manner when Bopp and others investi- 
 gated the grammatical structure of this family of languages. 
 Dr. Wiseman pronounces that the great philologist just 
 named, " by a minute and sagacious analysis of the Sanskrit 
 verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other 
 members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and 
 positive affinity." It was now discovered that the peculiar 
 terminations or inflections by which persons are expressed 
 throughout the verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, 
 have their foundations in pronouns ; the pronoun was simply 
 placed at the end, and thus became an inflection. " By an 
 analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those 
 existing in all the other languages were cleared of their 
 anomalies ; the verb substantive, which in Latin is composed 
 of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here found both 
 existing in regular form ; the Greek conjugations, with all 
 their complicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and 
 reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a variety of 
 ways, which a few years ago would have appeared chimerical. 
 Even our own language may sometimes receive light from 
 the study of distant members of our family. Where, for 
 instance, are we to seek for the root of our comparative better? 
 Certainly not in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic 
 dialects in which the same anomaly exists. But in the 
 Persian we have precisely the same comparative, behter, with 
 exactly the same signification, regularly formed from its 
 positive beh, good." ( 87 ) 
 
 The second great family of languages is the Syro-Plmni- 
 cian, comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and 
 Gheez or Abyssinian, being localized principally in the 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 217 
 
 countries to the west and south of the Mediterranean. Beyond 
 them, again, is the African family, which, as far as research 
 has gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common 
 features, both verbal and grammatical. The fourth is the 
 Polynesian family, extending from Madagascar on the west, 
 through the Indian Archipelago, besides taking in the 
 Malayan dialect from the continent of India, and compre- 
 hending Australia and the islands of the western portion of 
 the Pacific. This family, however, bears such an affinity 
 to that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some 
 others do not give it a distinct place as a family of lan- 
 guages. 
 
 The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of 
 China, and most of the regions of Central and Northern 
 Asia. The leading features of the Chinese language are, its 
 consisting altogether of monosyllables, and being destitute of 
 all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements and 
 accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words. It 
 is also deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous 
 in other languages, b, d, r, v, and z ; so that this people can 
 scarcely pronounce our speech in such a way as to be intelli- 
 gible : for example, the word Christus they call Kulias-ut-oo- 
 suh. The Chinese, strange to say, though they early attained 
 to a remarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the 
 Europeans in many of the most important inventions, have a 
 language which resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb 
 people. The sentence of short, simple, unconnected words, 
 in which an infant amongst us attempts to express some of 
 its wants and its ideas the equally broken and difficult terms 
 which the deaf and dumb express by signs, as the following 
 passage of the Lord's Prayer ! " Our Father, heaven in, 
 wish your name respect, wish your soul's kingdom providence 
 arrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality," &c. these 
 are like the discourse of the refined people of the so-called 
 Celestial Empire. An attempt was made by the Abbe 
 Sicard to teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs ; but 
 they persisted in restricting themselves to the simple signs of 
 
218 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 ideas, leaving the structure undetermined by any but the 
 natural order of connexion. Such is exactly the condition 
 of the Chinese language. 
 
 Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family, in 
 the languages of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of 
 them features in common, proving them to constitute a group 
 by themselves, without any regard to the very different degrees 
 of civilization which these nations had attained at the time of 
 the discovery. The common resemblance is in the gram- 
 matical structure as well as in words, and the grammatical 
 structure of this family is of a very peculiar and complicated 
 kind. The general character in this respect has caused the 
 term Polysynthetic to be applied to the American languages. 
 A long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquins 
 and Delawares to express a whole sentence : for example, a 
 woman of the latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, 
 would perhaps be heard saying, " huligatschis" meaning, 
 " give me your pretty little paw ;" the word, on examination, 
 is found to be made up in this manner : &, the second personal 
 pronoun ; uli, part of the word wulet, pretty ; gat, part of the 
 word wichgat, signifying a leg or paw : schis, conveying the 
 idea of littleness. In the same tongue, a youth is called 
 pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit, inno- 
 cent, and the latter part of lenape, a man. Thus, it will be 
 observed, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown 
 together, by a process which has been happily termed agglu- 
 tination, so as to form one word, conveying a complicated 
 idea. There is also an elaborate system of inflection ; in 
 nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection to express 
 the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express' 
 number. The genius of the language has been described as 
 accumulative ; it " tends rather to add syllables or letters, 
 making farther distinctions in objects already before the 
 mind, than to introduce new words." ( 88 ) Yet it has also 
 been shown very distinctly, that these languages are based 
 in words of one syllable, like those of the Chinese and Poly- 
 nesian families ; all the primary ideas are thus expressed : the 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 219 
 
 elaborate system of inflection and agglutination is shown to 
 be simply a farther development of the language-forming 
 principle, as it may be called or the Chinese system may 
 be described as an arrestment of this principle at a particular 
 early point. It has been fully shown, that between the struc- 
 ture of the American and other families sufficient affinities 
 exist to make a common origin or early connexion extremely 
 likely. The verbal affinities are also very considenfble. Hum- 
 boldt says, " In eighty-three American languages examined 
 by Messrs. Barton and Vater, one hundred and seventy words 
 have been found, the roots of which appear to be the same ; 
 and it is easy to perceive that this analogy is not accidental, 
 since- it does not rest merely upon imitative harmony, or on 
 that conformity of organs which produces almost a perfect 
 identity in the first sounds articulated by children. Of these 
 one hundred and seventy words which have this connexion, 
 three-fifths resemble the Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongol, 
 and the Samoyed ; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the 
 Biscayan, the Coptic, and Congo languages. These words 
 have been found by comparing the whole of the American 
 languages with the whole of those of the Old World ; for 
 hitherto we are acquainte4 with no American idiom which 
 seems to have an ^clusiv.e correspondence with any of the 
 Asiatic, African, or European tongues.( 89 ) Humboldt and 
 others considered these words as brought into America by 
 recent immigrants ; an idea resting on no proof, and which is 
 much discountenanced by. the common words being chiefly 
 those which represent primary ideas ; besides, we now know, 
 what was not formerly perceived or admitted, that there are 
 great affinities of structure also. I may here refer to a curious 
 mathematical calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the effect, 
 .that if three words coincide in two different languages, it is 
 ten to one they must be derived in both cases from some 
 parent language, or introduced in some othe* manner. " Six 
 words would give more," he says, " than seventeen hundred 
 to one, and eight near 100,^00; so that in these gases the 
 evidence would be little short of absolute certainty." He 
 
220 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 instances the following words to show a connexion between 
 the ancient Egyptian and the Biscayan : 
 
 BISCAYAN. EGYPTIAN. 
 
 New Beria Beri. 
 
 A dog Ora Whor 
 
 Little Gutchi Kudchi. 
 
 Bread Ognia Oik. 
 
 A wolf Otgsa Ounsh. 
 
 Seven Shashpi Shashf. 
 
 Now, as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred 
 and seventy words common to the languages of the new and 
 old continents, and many of these are expressive of the most 
 primitive ideas, there is, by Dr. Young's calculation, over- 
 powering proof of the original connexion of the American and 
 other human families. 
 
 It seems to me, after a full consideration of this kind of 
 evidence, in connexion with the development theory, that 
 there is. no reason to regard more than two local origins for 
 the human race as necessary ; namely, one for the Asiatic, 
 American, and European varieties, and another for the African. 
 The former seems to be connected with the great development 
 of the quadrumana in southern Asia ; the latter, with that of 
 western Africa. 
 
 What is known of the migrations of the first group of races, 
 and also their traditions, point to southern Asia as the scene 
 of their origin. The lines of these migrations all converge, 
 and are concentrated about the region of Hindostan. The 
 language, religion, modes of reckoning time, and some other 
 peculiar ideas of the Americans, are now believed to refer 
 their origin to North-Eastern Asia. Trace them further back 
 in the same direction, and we come to the north of India. The 
 history of the Celts and Teuton es represents them as coming 
 from the east, the one after the other, successive waves of a 
 tide of population flowing towards the north-west of Europe : 
 this line being also traced back, rests finally at the same place. 
 So does the line of Iranian population, which has peopled the 
 east and south shores of the Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and 
 Egypt. The Malay variety, again, rests its limit in one direc- 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 221 
 
 tion on the borders of India. Standing on that point, it is 
 easy to see how this great section of the human family, 
 originating there, might spread out in different directions, 
 passing into varieties of aspect and of language as they spread, 
 the Malay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic region, 
 the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the red 
 men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to 
 the north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, 
 towards the countries which they are known to have so long 
 occupied. The Negro alone is here unaccounted for; and 
 that race is the one most likely to have had an independent 
 origin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar in an inveterate 
 black colour, and so humble in development. The traditions 
 of the first section exhibit an agreement with this view of its 
 origin. There is one among the Hindoos which places the 
 cradle of the human family in Thibet ; another makes Ceylon 
 the residence of the first man. 
 
 It is one of those things necessary to complete our view of 
 the world as wholly under law, that civilization should appear 
 to be capable of arising in a natural manner. The tendency 
 of the uninstructed mind is to suppose supernatural causes for 
 such phenomena, and there are even educated persons whose 
 habits of thinking predispose them to take similar views. By 
 one of these it has lately been argued, that facts are in favour 
 of a supernatural origin for civilization. We see, says this 
 authority, many examples of nations falling away from civili- 
 zation into barbarism, while, in some regions of the earth, the 
 history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains 
 of works of art far superior to any which the present unen- 
 lightened inhabitants could have produced. The appearances 
 are therefore in favour of a decline from some great and wide- 
 spread civilization of early times. To this it may be answered 
 that these appearances are partial, compared with what we 
 know from history of an advance and an extension of civiliza- 
 tion from early times. The decadences from civilization in 
 such regions as Medea or Greece are only such local 
 instances of failure or suppression as might be expected when 
 civilization was cradled amidst nations generally barbarous, 
 
222 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 and who had an interest in attacking their wealthier neigh- 
 bours. This, at least, were as legitimate an inference from 
 the facts which are known. But it is also alleged that we 
 know of no such thing as civilization being ever self-originated. 
 It is always seen to be imparted from one people to another. 
 Hence, of course, we must infer that civilization at the first 
 could only have been of supernatural origin. There again it 
 may be answered It is not to be expected that we should 
 know of any of the ancient nations originating civilization 
 amongst themselves, for history commences when they are 
 already somewhat advanced in that course. As to the instances 
 in which it has been seen to be imparted, these may be true, 
 without necessarily implying that there was not a natural 
 origin of civilization in some of the earlier nations. It may 
 be questioned, however, if these instances are in themselves 
 true. The efforts made to trace the civilizations of Central 
 America to Egypt and other countries have all signally failed. 
 There is even a fallacy in supposing that, because Greece, for 
 example, obtained certain kinds of knowledge and forms of art 
 from Egvpt, its whole civilization was descended from that 
 and similar quarters. There are characteristic features in all 
 civilizations which support the idea that they are usually for 
 the most part original. There is not only this peculiarity, but 
 there is an isolatedness in some civilizations, which tallies 
 much better with the theory of their independent than their 
 imparted origin. When it is said that civilization is never seen 
 to arise without aid from external sources, an affirmation is 
 made on very imperfect grounds. It appears that civilization 
 does sometimes rise in a manner clearly independent amongst 
 a horde of people generally barbarous. A striking instance is 
 described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on the North- 
 American tribes. Far placed among those which inhabit the 
 vast region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of 
 any influence from the whites, he found a small tribe living in 
 a fortified village, where they cultivated the arts of manufac- 
 ture, realized comforts and luxuries, and had attained to a 
 remarkable refinement of manners, insomuch as to be gene- 
 rally called " the polite and friendly Mandans." They were 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 223 
 
 also more than usually elegant in their persons, and of every 
 variety of complexion between that of their compatriots and a 
 pure white. Up to the time of Mr. Catlin's visit, these people 
 had been able to defend themselves and their possessions 
 against the roving bands which surrounded them on all sides ; 
 but, soon after, they were attacked by small-pox, which cut 
 them all off except a small party, whom their enemies rushed 
 in upon and destroyed to a man. What is this but a repetition 
 on a small scale, of phenomena with w r hich ancient history 
 familiarizes us a nation rising in arts and elegancies amidst 
 barbarous neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude 
 majority, leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument 
 of itself to beautify the waste ? What can we suppose the 
 nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only 
 a kind of Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way 
 further along the path of civilization and the arts, before the 
 barbarians broke in upon it ? The flame essayed to rise in many 
 parts of the earth ; but there were strong agencies working 
 against it, and down it accordingly went, times without num- 
 ber ; yet there was always a vitality in it, nevertheless, and a 
 tendency to progress, and at length it seems to have attained 
 a strength against which the powers of barbarism can never 
 more prevail. The state of our knowledge of uncivilized 
 nations is very apt to make us fall into error on this subject. 
 They are generally supposed to be all at one point in barbarism, 
 which is far from being the case, for in the midst of every great 
 region of uncivilized men, such as North America, there are 
 nations partially refined. The Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, 
 are African examples, where a natural and independent origin 
 for the improvement which exists, is as unavoidably to be pre- 
 sumed as in the case of the Man dan s^ 90 ) 
 
 The most conclusive argument against the original civiliza- 
 tion of mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now 
 see civilization existing anywhere except in certain conditions 
 altogether different from any we can suppose to have existed 
 at the commencement of our race. To have civilization, it is 
 necessary that a people should be numerous and closely placed ; 
 that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe from 
 
224 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 violent external and internal disturbance ; that a considerable 
 number of them should be exempt from the necessity of drudg- 
 ing for immediate subsistence. Feeling themselves at ease 
 about the first necessities of their nature, including self-pre- 
 servation, and daily subjected to that intellectual excitement 
 which society produces, men begin to manifest what is called 
 civilization ; but never in rude and shelterless circumstances, 
 or when widely scattered. Even civilized men, when trans- 
 ferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to work hard and 
 isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon show a retro- 
 gression to barbarism : witness the plains of Australia, as 
 well as the back woods of Canada and the prairies of Texas. 
 Fixity of residence and thickening of population are perhaps 
 the prime requisites for civilization, and hence it will be found 
 that all civilizations as yet known have taken place in regions 
 physically limited. That of Egypt arose in a narrow valley 
 hemmed in by deserts on both sides. That of Greece took 
 its rise in a small peninsula bounded on the only land side by 
 mountains. Etruria and Rome were naturally limited regions. 
 Civilizations have taken place at both the eastern and western 
 extremities of the elder continent China and Japan, on the 
 one hand ; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the other, 
 while the great unmarked tract between contains nations 
 decidedly less advanced. Why is this, but because the sea 
 in both cases has imposed limits to further migration, and 
 caused the population to settle and condense ? the conditions 
 most necessary for social improvement.( 91 ) Even the simple 
 case of the Mandans affords an illustration of this principle ; 
 for Mr. Catlin expressly, though without the least regard to 
 theory, attributes their improvement to the fact of their being 
 a small tribe, obliged, by fear of their more numerous ene- 
 mies, to settle in a permanent village, so fortified as to ensure 
 their preservation. "By this means," says he, " they have 
 advanced furthej" in the arts of manufacture, and have sup- 
 plied their lodges more abundantly with the comforts and 
 even luxuries of life than any Indian nation I know of. The 
 consequence of this," he adds, " is, that the tribe have taken 
 many steps ahead of other tribes in manners and refinements" 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 225 
 
 These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws affect- 
 ing civilization. It is also necessary for a civilization that at 
 least a portion of the community should be placed above 
 mean and engrossing toils. Man's mind is subdued, like the 
 dyer's hand, to that it works in. In rude and difficult cir- 
 cumstances, we unavoidably become rude, because then only 
 the inferior and harsher faculties of our nature are called into 
 exercise. When, on the contrary, there is leisure and abun- 
 dance, the self-seeking and self-preserving instincts are allowed 
 to rest, the gentler and more generous sentiments are evoked, 
 and man becomes that courteous and chivalric being which 
 he is found to be amongst the upper classes of almost all 
 civilized countries. These, then, may be said to be the chief 
 natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civiliza- 
 tion. If I am right in so considering them, it will, of course, 
 be readily admitted that the earliest families of the human 
 race, although they might be simple and innocent, could not 
 have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing that the 
 conditions necessary for that state could not have then 
 existed. Let us only for a moment consider some of the 
 things requisite for their being civilized, namely, a set of 
 elegant homes ready furnished for their reception, fields, 
 ready cultivated to yield them food without labour, stores of 
 luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social enginery 
 for the securing of life and property, and we shall turn from 
 the whole conceit as one worthy only of the uninstructed 
 mind. 
 
 Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be 
 simple and innocent, while at the same time unskilled and 
 ignorant, and obliged to live upon only those substances which 
 they could readily procure. The traditions of all nations 
 refer to such a state as that in which mankind were at first : 
 perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the 
 human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers 
 of the race ; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely 
 forbids our entertaining this idea, while there are some con- 
 siderations rather favourable to it. A few families, in a state 
 of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the 
 Q 
 
226 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 means of subsistence abundantly, are generally simple and 
 innocent; their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also 
 apt to be active, although the higher intellect may be dor- 
 mant. If we therefore presume India to have been the cradle 
 of the principal portion of our race, they might at first 
 exemplify a kind of golden age ; but it could not be of long 
 continuance. The very first movements from the primal seat 
 would be attended with deterioration, nor could there be any 
 tendency to true civilization till groups had settled and 
 thickened in particular seats physically limited. 
 
 The causes of the various external peculiarities of mankind 
 now require some attention. Why, it is asked, are the 
 Africans black, and generally marked by ungainly forms ; 
 why the flat features of the Chinese, and the comparatively 
 well-formed figures of the Caucasians ? Why the Mongolians 
 generally yellow, the Americans red, and the Caucasians 
 white ? These questions were complete puzzles to all early 
 writers ; but physiology has lately thrown a great light upon 
 them. It is now shown that the brain, after completing the 
 series of animal transformations, passes through the cha- 
 racters in which it appears in the Negro, Malay, American, 
 and Mongolian nations, and finally becomes Caucasian. The 
 face partakes of these alterations. " One of the earliest points 
 in which ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone 
 is consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the 
 head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it 
 never loses in the Negro. During the soft pliant state of the 
 bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume, 
 approaches nearly the permanent shape of the Americans. At 
 birth, the flattened face, and broad smooth forehead of the in- 
 fant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side of the head, 
 and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form ; 
 while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the 
 oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of the 
 true Caucasian, become perfectly developed." ( 92 ) The leading 
 characters, in short, of the various races of mankind, are 
 simply representations of particular stages in the development 
 of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits per- 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 227 
 
 manently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and 
 slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable 
 time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American 
 represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an 
 arrested infant newly born. And so forth. All this is as 
 respects form ; ( 93 ) but whence colour ? This might be sup- 
 posed to have depended on climatal agencies only ; but it has 
 been shown by overpowering evidence to be independent of 
 these. In further considering the matter, we are met by 
 the very remarkable fact that colour is deepest in the least 
 perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in the 
 American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in which 
 the degrees of development are ranged. May not colour, 
 then, depend upon development also ? We do not, indeed, 
 see that a Caucasian foetus at the stage which the African 
 represents is black ; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like 
 the Mongolian. But the case of a Caucasian foetus, or 
 child, at any of its stages of development, is different from 
 that of a being whose mature form only comes up to the 
 same point. When a being is presented, who at full time has 
 only attained a point of formation such as the Caucasian 
 passed at a comparatively early stage of this embryotic 
 history, there may be a character of skin liable to a certain 
 tinting on being exposed. Development being arrested at so 
 immature a stage in the case of the Xegro, the skin may 
 take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its 
 imperfect organization. It is favourable to this view, that 
 Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only acquire 
 the full colour after exposure for some time to the atmo- 
 sphere ; also that the parts of the body concealed by clothing 
 are not generally of so deep a hue as the face and hands. 
 The phenomenon, in short, appears identical in character 
 with the photographic process ; not a result of the action of 
 heat, as has been so long blunderingly supposed, but of light ! 
 It takes its place under the infant science of actino-chemistry, 
 to which, perhaps, many other remarkable phenomena con- 
 nected with the natural history of our race will yet be 
 referred. This view, seeming to account for all the varieties 
 Q2 
 
228 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 of mankind as only the result of so many gradations in the 
 developing power of the human mothers, is favourable to the 
 doctrine of one origin ; but it cannot be considered as 
 settling the question, seeing that separate developments may 
 have attained various points in the scale of the human organi- 
 zation as one of the pachydermatous lines has reached the 
 full equine form in Asia, but only the comparatively humble 
 quagga in Africa. 
 
 We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all 
 languages afford a ground of presumption for the unity of at 
 least the principal portion of the human race. They establish 
 a still stronger probability that that portion of mankind had 
 not yet begun to disperse before they were possessed of a 
 means of communicating their ideas by conventional sounds 
 in short, speech. This is a gift so peculiar to man, and in 
 itself so remarkable, that there is a great inclination to 
 surmise a miraculous origin for it, although there is no 
 proper ground, or even support, for such an idea in Scripture, 
 while it is clearly opposed to everything else we know with 
 regard to the providential arrangements for the creation of 
 our race. Here, as in other cases, a little observation of 
 nature might have saved much vain discussion. The real 
 character of language itself has not been thoroughly under- 
 stood. Language, in its most comprehensive sense, is the 
 communication of ideas by whatever means. Ideas can be 
 communicated by looks, gestures, and signs of various other 
 kinds, as well as by speech. The inferior animals possess 
 some of those means of communicating ideas, and they have 
 likewise a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the 
 nature of which is a complete mystery to us, though we are 
 assured of its reality by its effects. Now, as the inferior 
 animals were all in being before man, there was language 
 upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced. 
 The only additional fact in the history of language, which 
 was produced by our creation, was the rise of a new mode of 
 expression namely, that by sound-signs produced by the 
 vocal organs. In other words, speech was the only novelty 
 in this respect attending the creation of the human race. No 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 229 
 
 doubt it was an addition of great importance, for, in com- 
 parison with it, the other natural modes of communicating 
 ideas are insignificant. Still, the main and fundamental 
 phenomenon, language, as the communication of ideas, was 
 no new gift of the Creator to man; and in speech itself, 
 when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a result of 
 some of those superior endowments of which so many others 
 have fallen to our lot through the medium of a superior 
 organization. 
 
 The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned 
 in speech is that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, 
 and mouth, which enables us to produce the various sounds 
 required. Man started at first with this organization ready 
 for use, a constitution of the atmosphere adapted for the 
 sounds which that organization was calculated to produce, 
 and, lastly, but not leastly, a mental power prompting to, and 
 giving directions for, the expression of ideas. Such an 
 arrangement of mutually adapted things was as likely to 
 produce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is to 
 give forth tones. It was unavoidable that human beings so 
 organized, and in such a relation to external nature, should 
 utter sounds, and also come to attach to these conventional 
 meanings, thus forming the elements of spoken language. 
 The great difficulty which has been felt, is to account for man 
 going in this respect beyond the inferior animals. There 
 could have been no such difficulty, if speculators in this class 
 of subjects had looked into physiology for an account of the 
 superior vocal organization of man, and had they obtained a 
 true science of mind to show man possessing a faculty for the 
 expression of ideas which is only rudimental in the lower 
 animals. Another difficulty has been in the consideration 
 that, if men were at first utterly untutored and barbarous, 
 they could scarcely be in a condition to form or employ 
 language an instrument which it requires the fullest powers 
 of thought to analyze and speculate upon. This difficulty 
 comes strangely from those who can see none in the miraculous 
 imparting of a full vocabulary to beings as yet possessing but 
 a portion of the ideas which an entire language represents. 
 
230 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 But, in reality, it is not necessary to suppose the fathers of 
 our race as early attaining to great proficiency in language, 
 and, in the second, language itself seems to be amongst the 
 things least difficult to be acquired, if we can form any 
 judgment from what we see in children, most of whom have, 
 by three years of age, while their information and judgment 
 are still as nothing, mastered and familiarized themselves with 
 a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding in proportion what 
 they acquire in the course of any subsequent similar portion 
 of time. 
 
 Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, 
 and the processes by which grammatical structure and inflec- 
 tions took their rise, appear in a great measure needless, after 
 the matter has been placed in this light. The mental powers 
 could readily connect particular arbitrary sounds with parti- 
 cular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or inter- 
 jections. As the words of all languages can be traced back 
 into roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these 
 sounds to have all been monosyllabic accordingly. The 
 clustering of two or more together to express a compound 
 idea, and the formation of inflections by additional syllables 
 expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and 
 to, are processes which would or might occur as matters 
 of course, being simple results of a mental power called into 
 action, and partly directed, by external necessities. This 
 power, however, as we find it in very different degrees of 
 endowment in individuals, so would it be in different degrees 
 of endowment in nations, or branches of the human family. 
 Hence we find the formation of words, and the process of their 
 composition and grammatical arrangement, in very different 
 stages of development in different races. The Chinese have 
 a language composed of a limited number of monosyllables, 
 which they multiply in use by mere variations of accent, and 
 which they have never yet attained the power of clustering 
 or inflecting ; the language of this immense nation the third 
 part of the human race may be said to be in the condition of 
 infancy. The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civiliza- 
 tion, have, on the other hand, a language of the most elabo- 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 231 
 
 rately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, in this respect, 
 the languages of the most refined European nations. These 
 are but a few out of many facts tending to show that lan- 
 guage is in a great measure independent of civilization, as far 
 as its advance and development are concerned. Do they not 
 also help to prove that cultivated intellect is not necessary for 
 the origination of language ? 
 
 Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally 
 simple reasons for the almost infinite diversification of lan- 
 guage. It is invariably found that, wherever society is at 
 once dense and refined, language tends to be uniform through- 
 out the whole population, and to undergo few changes in the 
 course of time. Wherever, on the contrary, we have a scat- 
 tered and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and 
 comparatively rapid alterations of language ; insomuch that, 
 while English, French, and German, are each spoken with 
 little variation by many millions, there are islands in the 
 Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, 
 but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as 
 are English, French, and German. It is easy to see how 
 this should be. There are peculiarities in the vocal organiz- 
 ation of every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pro- 
 nunciation : for example, it has been stated that each child in 
 a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different 
 manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more 
 advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation 
 of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy 
 are only to be checked by the power of example ; but this is a 
 power not always present, or not always of sufficient strength. 
 The self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South 
 Africa, states, without the least regard to hypothesis, that 
 amongst the people of the towns of that great region, " the 
 purity and harmony of language is kept up by their pitches 
 or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well 
 as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the 
 isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise. They have 
 no such meetings ; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, 
 often to a great distance from their native village. On such 
 
32 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, 
 often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to 
 the care of two or three infirm old people. The infant 
 progeny, some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others 
 can just master a whole sentence, and those still further 
 advanced, romping and playing together, the children of 
 nature, through the live-long day, become habituated te a 
 language of their own. The more voluble condescend to the 
 less precocious, and thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a 
 dialect composed of a host of mongrel words and phrases, 
 joined together without rule, and in the course of a generation 
 the entire character of the language is changed.'" ( y4 ) I have 
 been told, that in like manner the children of the Manchester 
 factory workers, left for a great part of the day, in large 
 assemblages, under the care of perhaps a single elderly 
 person, and spending the time in amusements, are found to 
 make a great deal of new language. I have seen children in 
 other circumstances amuse themselves by concocting and 
 throwing into the family circulation entirely new words ; and 
 I believe I am running little risk of contradiction when I say 
 that there is scarcely a family, even amongst the middle 
 classes of this country, who have not some peculiarities of 
 pronunciation and syntax, which have originated amongst 
 themselves, it is hardly possible to say how. All these things 
 being considered, it is easy to understand how mankind have 
 come at length to possess between three and four thousand 
 languages, all different at least as much as French, German, 
 and English, though, as has been shown, resemblances sug- 
 gesting a common origin are observable in most of them. 
 
 What has been said on the question whether mankind were 
 originally barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the 
 reader for understanding how the arts and sciences, and the 
 rudiments of civilization itself, took their rise amongst men. 
 The only source of fallacious views on this subject is the so 
 frequent observation of arts, sciences, and social modes, forms, 
 and ideas, being not indigenous where we see them now 
 flourishing, but known to have been derived elsewhere : thus 
 Rome borrowed from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 233 
 
 itself, lost in the mists of historic antiquity, is now supposed 
 to have obtained the light of knowledge from some still earlier 
 scene of intellectual culture. This has caused to many a 
 great difficulty in supposing a natural or spontaneous origin 
 for civilization and the attendant arts. But, in the first place, 
 several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument against 
 there having been an originality at some earlier stage. In 
 the second, such observers have not looked far enough, for, if 
 they had, they might have seen various instances of civiliza- 
 tions which it is impossible, with any plausibility, to trace 
 back to a common origin with others ; such are those of China 
 and America. They would also have seen civilization spring- 
 ing up, as it were, like oases amongst the arid plains of 
 barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans. A still more 
 attentive study of the subject would have shown, amongst 
 living men, the very psychological procedure on which the 
 origination of civilization and the arts and sciences depended. 
 These things, like language, are simply the effects of the 
 spontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in rela- 
 tion to the things of the external world on which it was 
 intended by creative Providence to be exercised. The 
 monkeys themselves, without instruction from any quarter, 
 learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses an 
 act which cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, 
 but of intelligence. Such being the case, there is no neces- 
 sary difficulty in supposing how man, with his superior 
 mental organization, (a brain five times heavier), was able, 
 in his primitive state, without instruction, to turn many 
 things in nature to his use, and commence, in short, the 
 circle of the domestic arts. He appears, in the most un- 
 favourable circumstances, to be able to provide himself with 
 some sort of dwelling, to make weapons, and to practise some 
 simple kind of cookery. But, granting, it will be said, that 
 he can go thus far, how does he ever proceed further un- 
 prompted, seeing that many nations remain fixed for ever at 
 this point, and seem unable to take one step in advance ? It 
 is perfectly true that there is such a fixation in many nations ; 
 but, on the other hand, all nations are not alike in mental 
 
234 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 
 
 organization, and another point has been established, that 
 onlj when some favourable circumstances have settled a 
 people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get leave 
 to flourish. If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed 
 nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized, 
 we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origi- 
 nation of new ideas and devices. But let us look at the in- 
 ventive class of minds which stand out amongst their fellows 
 the men, who, with little prompting or none, conceive new 
 ideas in science, arts, morals and we can be at no loss to 
 understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that 
 civilization which history traces from country to country 
 throughout the course of centuries. See a Pascal repro- 
 ducing the Alexandrian's problems at fifteen ; a Ferguson 
 making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while 
 tending cattle on a Morayshire heath ; a boy Lawrence, in an 
 inn on the Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings 
 which the educated could not but admire ; or look at Solon and 
 Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of 
 all but divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, 
 three thousand years ago and the whole mystery is solved 
 at once. Amongst the arrangements of Providence is one 
 for the production of original, inventive, and aspiring minds, 
 which, when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, 
 strike out new ideas for the benefit of their fellow- creatures, 
 or put upon them a lasting impress of their own superior sen- 
 timents. Nations, improved by these means, become in turn 
 foci for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of 
 barbarism their very passions helping to this end, for no- 
 thing can be more clear, than that ambitious aggression has 
 led to the civilization of many countries. Such is the process 
 which seems to form the destined means for bringing man- 
 kind from the darkness of barbarism to the day of knowledge 
 and mechanical and social improvement. Even the noble art 
 of letters is but, as Dr. Adam Ferguson has remarked, " a 
 natural produce of the human mind, which will rise spon- 
 taneously, wherever men are happily placed ;" original alike 
 amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly monumented 
 
EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 235 
 
 Toltecans of Yucatan. "Banish," says Dr. Gall, "music, 
 poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and 
 sciences, and let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, 
 Glucks, and Canovas, be forgotten, yet let men of genius of 
 every description spring up, and poetry, music, painting, 
 architecture, sculpture, and all the arts and sciences, will 
 again shine out in all their glory. Twice within the records 
 of history has the human race traversed the great circle of its 
 entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been 
 followed by a higher degree of refinement. It is a great mis- 
 take to suppose one people to have proceeded from another on 
 account of their conformity of manners, customs, and arts. 
 The swallow of Paris builds its nest like the swallow of 
 Vienna, but does it thence follow that the former sprung 
 from the latter ? With the same causes we have the same 
 effects ; with the same organization we have the manifesta- 
 tion of the same powers." 
 
236 
 
 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS, 
 
 No clear ideas have as yet been entertained by the generality 
 of even educated men, with regard to the mental constitution 
 of animals. The very nature of this constitution is not as 
 yet generally known or held as ascertained. There is, indeed, 
 a notion of old standing, that the mind is in some way con- 
 nected with the brain ; but the metaphysicians insist that it 
 is, in reality, known only by its acts or effects, and they 
 accordingly present the subject in a form which is unlike any 
 other kind of science, for it does not so much as pretend to 
 have a basis in nature. There is a general disinclination to 
 regard mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that 
 this must interfere with the cherished religious doctrine of 
 the spirit of man, and lower him to the level of the brutes. 
 A distinction is therefore drawn between our mental mani- 
 festations and those of the lower animals, the latter being 
 comprehended under the term instinct, while ours are col- 
 lectively described as mind, mind being again a received 
 synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man. There is 
 here a strange system of confusion and error, which it is 
 most imprudent to regard as essential to religion, since candid 
 investigations of nature tend to show its untenableness. There 
 is, in reality, nothing to prevent our regarding man as being 
 specially, in accordance with his position as the head or chief 
 of all animals, endowed with an immortal spirit, at the same 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 237 
 
 time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon 
 as simple phenomena resulting from organization, those of the 
 lower animals being phenomena absolutely the same in cha- 
 racter, though developed within narrower limits^ 95 ) 
 
 What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of 
 learned and unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its 
 apparently irregular and wayward character. How different 
 the manifestations in different beings ! how unstable in all ! 
 at one time so calm, at another so wild and impulsive ! It 
 seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant could 
 be part of a system, the main features of which are regularity 
 and precision. But the irregularity of mental phenomena is 
 only in appearance. When we give up the individual, and 
 take the mass, we find as much uniformity of result as in any 
 other class of natural phenomena. The irregularity is exactly 
 of the same kind as that of the weather. Xo man can say 
 what may be the weather of to-morrow ; but the quantity of 
 rain which falls in any particular place in any five years is 
 precisely the same as the quantity which falls in any other 
 five years at the same place. Thus, while it is absolutely 
 impossible to predict of any one Frenchman that during next 
 year he will commit a crime, it is quite certain that about 
 one in every six hundred and fifty of the French people will 
 do so, because in past years the proportion has generally been 
 about that amount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the 
 temptations being everywhere invariable over a sufficiently 
 wide range of time. So also, the number of persons taken in 
 charge by the police in London for being drunk and dis- 
 orderly in the streets, is, week by week, a nearly uniform 
 quantity, showing that the inclination to drink to excess is 
 always in the mass about the same, regard being had to the 
 existing temptations or stimulations to this vice. Even mis- 
 takes and oversights are of regular recurrence, for it "is found 
 in the post-offices of large cities, that the number of letters 
 put in without addresses is year by year the same. Statistics 
 has ascertained an equally distinct regularity in a wide range, 
 with regard to many other things concerning the mind, and 
 the doctrine founded upon it has lately produced a scheme 
 
238 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 which may well strike the ignorant with surprise. It was 
 proposed to establish in London a society for ensuring the 
 integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, arid all such func- 
 tionaries as are usually obliged to find security for money 
 passing through their hands in the course of business. A 
 gentleman of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the 
 plan in the following terms : " If a thousand bankers 1 clerks 
 were to club together to indemnify their securities, by the 
 payment of one pound a year each, and if each had given 
 security for 500/., it is obvious that two in each year might 
 become defaulters to that amount, four to half the amount, 
 and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent. 
 If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dis- 
 honesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in five 
 hundred, this club would continue to exist, subject to being 
 in debt in a bad year, to an amount which it would be able 
 to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary to 
 be asked previous to the formation of such a club would be, 
 may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty 
 would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready- 
 made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of 
 obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been 
 kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among 
 those who know them ? Suppose this be sufficiently answered 
 by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory 
 testimony to their previous good character should be allowed 
 to join the club ; that persons who may now hope that a 
 deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushed up by 
 the relative or friend who is security, will know very well 
 that the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or 
 to keep the secret, and so on. It then only remains to ask, 
 whether the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient ?" ( 96 ) 
 The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, 
 seems to be simply this, that amongst a given (large) number 
 of persons of good character, there will be, within a year or 
 other considerable space of time, a determinate number of 
 instances in which moral principle and the terror of the con- 
 sequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a deter- 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 239 
 
 minate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical 
 amount of loss which the association must make up. 
 
 This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes 
 their being under the presidency of law. Man is seen to be 
 an enigma only as an individual ; in the mass he is a mathe- 
 matical problem. It is hardly necessary to say, much less to 
 argue, that mental action, being proved to be under law, 
 passes at once into the category of natural things. Its old 
 metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the dis- 
 tinction usually taken between physical and moral is 
 annulled. This view agrees with what all observation teaches, 
 that mental phenomena flow directly from the brain. They 
 are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and naturally 
 conditioned organs, and thus obedient, like all other organic 
 phenomena, to law. And how wondrous must the constitu- 
 tion of this apparatus be, which gives us consciousness of 
 thought and of affection, which makes us familiar with the 
 numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in concep- 
 tion and communion to the councils of God himself! It is 
 matter which forms the medium or instrument a little mass 
 which, decomposed, is but so much common dust ; yet in its 
 living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by Al- 
 mighty Wisdom, how admirable its character ! how reflective 
 of the unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so 
 formed, and is so sustained ! 
 
 In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a 
 means of providing for the independent existence and the 
 various relations of animals, each species being furnished 
 according to its special necessities and the demands of its 
 various relations. The nervous system the more compre- 
 hensive term for its organic apparatus is variously developed 
 in different classes and species, and also in different indi- 
 viduals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the 
 amount of power. Passing over the humblest orders, where 
 nervous apparatus is so obscure as hardly to be traceable, we 
 see it in the nematoneura of Owen,( 9: ) in filaments and 
 nuclei, the mere rudiments of the system. In the articulata, 
 it is advanced to a double nervous cord, with ganglia or little 
 
240 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 masses of nervous matter at frequent intervals, and filaments 
 branching out towards each side ; the ganglia near the head 
 being apparently those which send out nerves to the organs 
 of the senses ; and this arrangement is only less symmetrical 
 in the mollusca. Ascending to the vertebrata, we find a 
 spinal cord, with a brain at the upper extremity, and nume- 
 rous branching lines of nervous tissue,( 98 ) an organization 
 strikingly superior ; yet here, as in the general structure of 
 animals, the great principle of unity is observed. The brain 
 of the vertebrata is merely an expansion of the anterior pair 
 of the ganglia of the articulata, or these ganglia may be 
 regarded as the rudiment of a brain, the superior organ thus 
 appearing as only a further development of the inferior. 
 There are many facts which tend to prove that the action of 
 this apparatus is of an electric nature, a modification of that 
 surprising agent, which takes magnetism, heat, and light, as 
 other subordinate forms, and of whose general scope in this 
 great system of things we are only beginning to have a faint 
 conception. It has been found that simple electricity, artifi- 
 cially produced, and sent along the nerves of a dead body, 
 excites muscular movement. The brain of a newly-killed 
 animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which 
 produces electric action, the operation of digestion, which had 
 been interrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, 
 showing that the brain, in one of its capacities or powers, is 
 identical with the galvanic battery. Nor is this a very 
 startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost as 
 metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be. It is a thing 
 perfectly intangible, weightless. A mass of metal may be 
 magnetized, or heated to seven hundred of Fahrenheit, 
 without becoming the hundredth part of a grain heavier. 
 And yet electricity is a real thing, an actual existence in 
 nature, as witness the effects of heat and light in vegetation 
 the power of the galvanic current to re-assemble the particles 
 of copper from a solution, and make them again into a solid 
 plate the rending force of the thunderbolt as it strikes the 
 oak. See also how both heat and light observe the angle of 
 incidence in reflection, as exactly as does a stone thrown 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 241 
 
 obliquely against a wall. So mental action may be impon- 
 derable, intangible, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the 
 Eternal through his la\vs.(") 
 
 Common observation shows a great general superiority of 
 the human mind over that of the inferior animals. Man's 
 rnind is almost infinite in device ; it ranges over all the 
 world : it forms the most wonderful combinations ; it seeks 
 back into the past, and stretches forward into the future ; 
 while the animals generally appear to have a narrow range of 
 thought and action. But so also has an infant but a limited 
 range, and yet it is mind which works there, as well as in 
 the most accomplished adults. The difference between mind 
 in the lower animals and in man is a difference in degree 
 only ; it is not a specific difference. All who have studied 
 animals by actual observation, and even those who have given 
 a candid attention to the subject in books, must attain more 
 or less clear convictions of this truth, notwithstanding all the 
 obscurity which prejudice may have engendered. We see 
 animals capable of affection, jealousy, envy ; we see them 
 quarrel, and conduct quarrels in the very manner pursued by 
 the ruder and less educated of our own race. We see them 
 liable to flattery, inflated with pride, and dejected by shame. 
 We see them as tender to their young as human parents are, 
 and as faithful to a trust as the most conscientious of human 
 servants. The horse is startled by marvellous objects, as a 
 man is. The dog and many others show tenacious memory. 
 The dog also proves himself possessed of imagination, by the 
 act of dreaming. Horses finding themselves in want of a 
 shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shop 
 where they were shod before. Cats closed up in rooms, will 
 endeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling a latch or 
 ringing a bell. A monkey, wishing to get into a particular 
 tree, and seeing a dangerous snake at the bottom of it, 
 watched for hours till he found the reptile for a moment off 
 its guard ; he sprang upon it, and, seizing it by the neck, 
 bruised its head to pieces against a stone ; after which he 
 quietly ascended the tree. We can hardly doubt that the 
 animal seized and bruised the head, because he knew or 
 
242 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 judged there was danger in that part. It has several times 
 been observed that in a field of cattle, when one or two were 
 mischievous, and persisted long in annoying or tyrannizing 
 over the rest, the herd, to all appearance, consulted, and then, 
 making a united effort, drove the troublers off the ground. 
 The members of a rookery have also been observed to take 
 turns in supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphan- 
 hood. All of these are acts of reason, in no respect different 
 from similar acts of men. Moreover, although there is no 
 heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst the lower animals, 
 as there is amongst us, they are in some degree susceptible of 
 those modifications of natural character, and capable of those 
 accomplishments, which we call education. The taming and 
 domestication of animals, and the changes thus produced upon 
 their nature in the course of generations, are results identical 
 with civilization amongst ourselves ; and the quiet, servile 
 steer is probably as unlike the original wild cattle of this 
 country, as the English gentleman of the present day is 
 unlike the rude baron of the age of King John. Between a 
 young, unbroken horse, and a trained one, there is, again, all 
 the difference which exists between a wild youth reared at his 
 own discretion in the country, and the same person when he 
 has been toned down by long exposure to the influences of 
 refined city society. Of extensive combinations of thought 
 we have no reason to believe that any animals are capable 
 and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter Scott's 
 remark, that there was scarcely anything which he would not 
 believe of a dog. There is a curious result of education in 
 certain animals, namely, that habits to which they have been 
 trained, in some instances become hereditary. For example, 
 the accomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure 
 result of education, appears in the young pups brought up 
 apart from their parents and kind. The peculiar leap of the 
 Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing a boggy 
 country, is continued in the progeny brought up in England. 
 This hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to 
 that form of psychological manifestation usually called in- 
 stinct ; but instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 243 
 
 in a peculiar stage of development ; and though the fact were 
 otherwise, it could not aft'ect the conclusion, that manifesta- 
 tions such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual 
 manifestations, not to be distinguished as such from those of 
 human beings. 
 
 More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phe- 
 nomena long before man existed. While as yet there was 
 no brain capable of working out a mathematical problem, the 
 economy of the six sided figure was exemplified by the in- 
 stinct of the bee. The dog and the elephant prefigured the 
 sagacity of the human mind. The love of a human mother 
 for her babe was anticipated by nearly every humbler mam- 
 mal, the carnaria not excepted. The peacock strutted, the 
 turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, just as 
 human beings afterwards did, and still do. Our faculty of 
 imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was 
 exercised by the mocking-bird ; and the whole tribe of mon- 
 keys must have walked about the pre-human world, playing 
 off those tricks in which we see the comicality and mischief- 
 making of our character so curiously exaggerated. 
 
 The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give 
 great antecedent probability to what observation seems about 
 to establish, that, as the brain of the vertebrata generally is 
 only an advanced condition of a particular ganglion in the 
 mollusca and Crustacea, so are the brains of the higher and 
 more intelligent mammalia only further developments of the 
 brains of the inferior orders of the same class. Or, to the 
 same purpose, it may be said, that each species has certain 
 superior developments, according to its needs, while others 
 are in a rudimental or repressed state. This will more clearly 
 appear after some inquiry has been made into the various 
 powers comprehended under the term mind. 
 
 One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give 
 consciousness consciousness of our identity and of our ex- 
 istence. This, apparently, is independent of the senses, 
 which are simply media, and, as Locke has shown, the only 
 media, through which ideas respecting the external world 
 reach the brain. The access of such ideas to the brain is 
 
 E2 
 
244 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of 
 perception. Gall, however, has shown, by induction from a 
 vast numher of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain 
 devoted to perception, and that even this is subdivided into 
 portions which are respectively dedicated to the reception of 
 different sets of ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight, 
 objects in their totality, events in their progress or occur- 
 rence, time, musical sounds, etc. The system of mind in- 
 vented by this philosopher the only one founded upon 
 nature, or which even pretends to or admits of that necessary 
 basis shows a portion of the brain acting as a faculty of 
 comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, one for 
 discriminating or observing differences, and another in which 
 resides the power of tracing effects to causes. There are 
 also districts of the brain for the sentimental part of our na- 
 ture, or the affections, at the head of which stand the moral 
 feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration. 
 Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow- 
 men, the external world, and his God ; and through these 
 comes most of the happiness of man's life, as well as that 
 which he derives from the contemplation of the world to 
 come, and the cultivation of his relation to it, (pure religion.) 
 The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated, their 
 names being sufficient in general to denote their functions 
 firmness, hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation, 
 secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation, 
 combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhesive- 
 ness, love of the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, 
 and love of life. Through these faculties, man is connected 
 with the external world, and supplied with active impulses to 
 maintain his place in it as an individual and as a species. 
 There is also a faculty, (language,) for expressing, by what- 
 ever means, (signs, gestures, looks, conventional terms in 
 speech,) the ideas which arise in the mind. There is a par- 
 ticular state of each of these faculties, when the ideas of 
 objects once formed by it are revived or reproduced, a pro- 
 cess which seems to be intimately allied with some of the 
 phenomena of photography, when images impressed by re- 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 245 
 
 flection of the sun's rays upon sensitive paper are, after a 
 temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being ex- 
 posed to the fumes of mercury. Such are the phenomena of 
 memory, that handmaid of intellect, without which there 
 could be no accumulation of mental capital, but an universal 
 and continual infancy. Conception and imagination appear 
 to be only intensities, so to speak, of the state of brain in 
 which memory is produced. On their promptness and power 
 depend most of the exertions which distinguish the man of 
 arts and letters, and even in no small measure the cultivator 
 of science. 
 
 The faculties above described the actual elements of the 
 mental constitution are seen in mature man in an indefinite 
 potentiality and range of action. It is different with the 
 lower animals. They are there comparatively definite in 
 their power and restricted in their application. The reader 
 is familiar with what are called instincts in some of the 
 humbler species, that is, an uniform and unprompted ten- 
 dency towards certain particular acts, as the building of cells 
 by the bee, the storing of provisions by that insect and 
 several others, and the construction of nests for a coming 
 progeny by birds. This quality is nothing more than a mode 
 of operation peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of en- 
 dowment, or early stage of development. The cell-formation 
 of the bee, the house-building of ants and beavers, the web- 
 spinning of spiders, are but primitive exercises of construc- 
 tiveness, the faculty which, indefinite with us, leads to the 
 arts of the weaver, upholsterer, architect, and mechanist, and 
 makes us often work delightedly where our labours are in 
 vain, or nearly so. The storing of provision by the bees is 
 an exercise of acquisitiveness, a faculty which with us makes 
 rich men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, by 
 which insects provide for the protection and subsistence of 
 their young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most 
 probably a peculiar restricted effort of philo-progenitiveness. 
 The common source of this class of acts, and of common 
 mental operations, is shown very convincingly by the melt- 
 ing of the one set into the other. Thus, for example, the 
 
246 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary form of 
 their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus, 
 the alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually defi- 
 nite with regard to quantity and quality, can be pampered or 
 educated up to a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness 
 of object and action. The same faculty acts limitedly in our- 
 selves at first, dictating the special act of sucking; after- 
 wards it acquires indefiniteness. Such is the real nature of 
 the distinction between what are called instinct and reason, 
 upon which so many volumes have been written without 
 profit to the world. All faculties are instinctive, that is, 
 dependent on internal and inherent impulses. This term is 
 therefore not specially applicable to either of the recognised 
 modes of the operation of the faculties. We only, in the one 
 case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly developed 
 state ; in the other, in its most advanced condition. In the 
 one case it is definite, in the other, indefinite, in its range of 
 action. These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for 
 expressing the distinction. 
 
 In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely any- 
 thing besides a definite action in a few of the faculties. Ge- 
 nerally speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we see more and 
 more of the faculties in exercise, and these tending more to 
 the indefinite mode of manifestation. And for this there is 
 the obvious reason in providence, that the lowest animals 
 have all of them a very limited sphere of existence, born only 
 to perform a few functions, and enjoy a brief term of life, 
 and then give way to another generation, so that they do not 
 need much mental power or guidance. At higher points in 
 the scale, the sphere of existence is considerably extended, 
 and the mental operations are less definite accordingly. The 
 horse, dog, and a few other animals, noticed for their service- 
 ableness to our race, have the indefinite powers in no small 
 endowment. Man, again, shows very little of the definite 
 mode of operation, and that little chiefly in childhood, or in 
 barbarism, or idiocy. Destined for a wide field of action, 
 and to be applicable to infinitely varied contingencies, he has 
 all the faculties developed to a high pitch of indefiniteness, 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 247 
 
 that he may be ready to act well in all imaginable cases. His 
 commission, it may be said, gives large discretionary powers, 
 while that of the inferior animals is limited to a few precise 
 directions. But when the human brain is congenitally im- 
 perfect or diseased, or when it is in a state of infancy, we see 
 in it an approach towards the character of the brains of some 
 of the inferior animals. Dr. J. G. Davey states that he has 
 frequently witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell 
 Lunatic Asylum, indications of a particular abnormal cere- 
 bration which forcibly reminded him of the specific healthy 
 characteristics of animals lower in the scale of organiza- 
 tion ;( 100 ) and every one must have observed how often the 
 actions of children, especially in their moments of play, and 
 where their selfish feelings are concerned, bear a resemblance 
 to those of certain familiar animals. Behold, then, the won- 
 derful unity of the whole system. The grades of mind, like 
 the forms of being, are mere stages of development. In the 
 humbler forms, only a few of the mental faculties are traceable, 
 just as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal 
 structure. In man the system has arrived at its highest con- 
 dition. The fe\v gleams of reason, then, which we see in the 
 lower animals, are precisely analogous to such a development 
 of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle of the whale. 
 Causality, comparison, and other of the nobler faculties, are 
 in them rudimentaL 
 
 Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of 
 our mental organization with the lower animals, we are yet, 
 it will be observed, strikingly distinguished from them by 
 this great advance in development. We have faculties in full 
 force and activity which the animals either possess not at all, 
 or in so low and obscure a form as to be equivalent to non- 
 existence. Now these parts of mind are those which connect 
 us with the things that are not of this world. We have 
 veneration, prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which 
 the animals lack. We have hope, to carry us on in thought 
 beyond the bounds of time. We have reason, to enable us to 
 inquire into the character of the Great Father, and the rela- 
 tion of us, his humble creatures, towards him. We have con- 
 
248 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 scientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint 
 and humble measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he 
 exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous doings. Beyond 
 this, mental science does not carry us in support of religion : 
 the rest depends on evidence of a different kind. But it is 
 surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for 
 things so important. The existence of faculties having a 
 regard to such things is a good evidence that such things 
 exist. The face of God is reflected in the organization of 
 man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun. 
 
 The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable 
 to operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are pre- 
 sented, and this they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the 
 tree sucks up moisture which it requires, with only this excep- 
 tion, that one faculty often interferes with the action of 
 another, and operates instead, by force of superior inherent 
 strength or temporary activity. For example, alimentiveness 
 may be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate 
 object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in 
 consequence of the more powerful operation of cautiousness, 
 warning against evil consequences likely to ensue from the 
 desired indulgence. This liability to flit from under the con- 
 trol of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes what 
 is recognised as free will in man, being nothing more than a 
 vicissitude in the supremacy of the faculties over each other. 
 
 It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of 
 our own species are all of them formed with similar faculties 
 similar in power and tendency and that education and the 
 influence of circumstances produce all the differences which 
 we observe. There is not, in the old systems of mental 
 philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to the truth than this. 
 It is refuted at once by the great differences of intellectual 
 tendency and moral disposition to be observed amongst a 
 group of young children who have been all brought up in 
 circumstances perfectly identical even in twins, who have 
 never been but in one place, under the charge of one nurse, 
 attended to alike in all respects. The mental characters of 
 individuals are inherently various, as the forms of their per- 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 249 
 
 sons and the features of their faces are ; and education and 
 circumstances, though their influence is not to be despised, 
 are incapable of entirely altering these characters, where they 
 are strongly developed. That the original characters of mind 
 are dependent on the volume of particular parts of the brain 
 and the general quality of that viscus, is proved by induction 
 from an extensive range of observations, the force of which 
 must have been long since universally acknowledged but for 
 the unpreparedness of mankind to admit a functional con- 
 nexion between mind and body. The different mental charac- 
 ters of individuals may be presumed from analogy to depend 
 on the same law of development which we have seen deter- 
 mining forms of being and the mental characters of particular 
 species. This we may conceive as carrying forward the 
 intellectual powers and moral dispositions of some to a high 
 pitch, repressing those of others at a moderate amount, and 
 thus producing all the varieties which we see in our fellow- 
 creatures. Thus a Cuvier and a Newton are but expansions 
 of a clown ; and the person emphatically called the wicked 
 man, is one whose highest moral feelings are rudimental. 
 Such differences are not confined to our species ; they are 
 only less strongly marked in many of the inferior animals. 
 There are clever dogs and wicked horses, as well as clever 
 men and wicked men ; and education sharpens the talents, 
 and in some degree regulates the dispositions of animals, as it 
 does our own. 
 
 There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental 
 constitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as 
 there is between all the parts of nature to each other. The 
 goods of the physical world are only to be realized by ingenuity 
 and industrious exertion; behold, accordingly, an intellect 
 full of device, and a fabric of the faculties which would go to 
 pieces or destroy itself if it were not kept in constant occu- 
 pation. Nature presents to us much that is sublime and 
 beautiful : behold faculties which delight in contemplating 
 these properties of hers, and in rising upon them, as upon 
 wings, to the presence of the Eternal. It is also a world of 
 difficulties and perils, and see how a large portion of our 
 
250 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 species are endowed with vigorous powers, which take a 
 pleasure in meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger. 
 Even that principle on which our faculties are constituted a 
 wide range of freedom in which to act for all various occa- 
 sions necessitates a resentful- faculty, by which individuals 
 may protect themselves from the undue and capricious exer- 
 cise of each other's faculties, and thus preserve their individual 
 rights. So also there is cautiousness, to give us a tendency 
 to provide against the evils by which we may be assailed ; 
 and secretiveness, to enable us to conceal whatever, being 
 divulged, would be offensive to others or injurious to our- 
 selves, a function which obviously has a certain legitimate 
 range of action, however liable to be abused. The constitu- 
 tion of the mind generally points to a state of intimate relation 
 of individuals towards society, towards the external world, and 
 towards things above this world. No individual being is 
 integral or independent ; he is only part of an extensive piece 
 of social mechanism. The inferior mind, full of rude energy 
 and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior 
 nature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior 
 nature require to be surrounded by such rough elements on 
 which to exercise its high endowments as a ruling and tutelary 
 power. This relation of each to each produces a vast portion 
 of the active business of life. It is easy to see that, if we 
 were all alike in our moral tendencies, and all placed on a 
 medium of perfect moderation in this respect, the world would 
 be a scene of everlasting dulness and apathy. It requires 
 the variety of individual constitution to give moral life to the 
 scene. 
 
 The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, 
 and the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead 
 unavoidably to occasional error. If we consider for a moment 
 that there are not less than thirty such faculties, that they 
 are each given in different proportions to different persons, 
 that each is at the same time endowed with a wide discretion 
 as to the force and frequency of its action, and that our 
 neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something 
 beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 251 
 
 us, we cannot be surprised at the irregularities attending 
 human conduct. It is simply the penalty paid for the 
 superior endowment. It is here that the so-called imper- 
 fection of our nature resides. Causality and conscientiousness 
 are, it is true, guides over all; but even these are only 
 faculties of the same indefinite potentiality as the rest, and 
 partake accordingly of the same inequality of action. Man is 
 therefore a piece of mechanism, which never can act so as to 
 satisfy his own ideas of what he might be for he can 
 imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can imagine a 
 globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,) though his 
 constitution forbids him to realize it. There ever will, in the 
 best disposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional dis- 
 crepancies between the amount of temptation and the power 
 summoned for regulation or resistance, or between the 
 stimulus and the mobility of the faculty; and hence those 
 errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with 
 which the good are constantly finding cause to charge them- 
 selves. There is at the same time even here a possibility of 
 improvement. In infancy, the impulses are all of them 
 irregular ; a child is cruel, cunning, and false, under the 
 slightest temptation, but in time learns to control these incli- 
 nations, and to be habitually humane, frank, and truthful. 
 So is human society, in its earliest stages, sanguinary, 
 aggressive, and deceitful, but in time, becomes just, faithful, 
 and benevolent. To such improvements there is a natural 
 tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances, though 
 it is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses 
 will ever be altogether banished from the system. 
 
 It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be 
 born into the world whose organization is such that they 
 unavoidably, even in a civilised country, become malefactors. 
 Does God, it may be asked, make criminals? Does he 
 fashion certain beings with a predestination to evil ? He 
 does not do so ; and yet the criminal type of brain, as it is 
 called, comes into existence in accordance with laws which 
 the Deity has established. It is not, however, as the result of 
 the first or general intention of those laws, but as an exception 
 
252 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 from their ordinary and proper action. The production of 
 those evilly disposed beings is in this manner. The moral 
 character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as does 
 the physical character also,) upon conditions of the parents, 
 both general conditions, and conditions at the particular time 
 of the commencement of the existence of the new being, and 
 likewise external conditions affecting the foetus through the 
 mother. Now the amount of these conditions is indefinite. 
 The faculties of the parents, as far as these are concerned, 
 may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme of 
 tensibility in one direction. The influences upon the foetus 
 may have also been of an extreme and unusual kind. Let us 
 suppose that the conditions upon the whole have been favour- 
 able for the development, not of the higher, but of the lower 
 sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the 
 result will necessarily be a mean type of brain. Here, it will 
 be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he 
 decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our per- 
 plexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. 
 He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a 
 principle, good in the main, but which admits of evil as an 
 exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God 
 leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action : 
 the general good results of this arrangement are obvious ; but 
 exceptions of evil are inseparable from such a system, and this 
 is one of them. To come to particular illustration when a 
 people are oppressed, or kept in a state of slavery, they inva- 
 riably contract habits of lying, for the purpose of deceiving 
 and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being a refuge of 
 the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parents 
 becomes an inherent quality in children. We are not, there- 
 fore, to be surprised when a traveller tells us that black 
 children in the West Indies appear to lie by instinct, and 
 never answer a white person truly, even in the simplest 
 matter. Here we have secretiveness roused in a people to a 
 state of constant and exalted exercise ; an over tendency of 
 the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence, and 
 a new organic condition is established. This tells upon the 
 
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 253 
 
 progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness 
 excessive in strength and activity. All other evil charac- 
 teristics may be readily conceived as being implanted in a 
 new generation in the same way. And sometimes not one, 
 but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the 
 result to a pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be 
 observed, that the general tendency of things is to a limitation, 
 not the extension of such abnormally constituted beings. The 
 criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where all is against 
 it. It may struggle on for a time, but it is sure to be over- 
 come at last by the medium and superior natures. The 
 disposal of such beings will always depend much on the 
 moral state of a community, the degree in which just views 
 prevail with regard to human nature, and the feelings which 
 accident may have caused to predominate at a particular time. 
 "Where the mass was little enlightened or refined, and terrors 
 for life or property were highly excited, malefactors have ever 
 been treated severely. But when order is generally trium- 
 phant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true 
 case of criminals namely, that while one large section are 
 victims of erroneous social conditions, another are brought to 
 error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate in 
 having inherited from nature. Criminal jurisprudence then 
 addresses itself less to the direct punishment than to the 
 reformation and care-taking of those liable to its attention. 
 And such a treatment of criminals, it may be farther re- 
 marked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement 
 to crime, (a point which experience will determine,) is evi- 
 dently no more than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms 
 of the moral constitution are distributed and how thoroughly 
 mutual obligation shines throughout the whole frame of 
 society the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem and 
 restrain the bad. 
 
 The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution 
 of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like 
 everything else, to be developed from inherent qualities, and 
 to have a mode of action depending solely on its own organi- 
 zation. Thus the whole is complete on one principle. The 
 
254 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 masses of space are formed by law ; law makes them in due 
 time theatres of existence for plants and animals ; sensation, 
 disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and 
 sustained in action by law. It is most interesting to observe 
 into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature 
 thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has been 
 thought to have one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION. 
 The organic, the other great department of mundane things, 
 rests in like manner on one law, and that is DEVELOPMENT. 
 Nor may even these be after all twain, but only branches of 
 one still more comprehensive law, the expression of a unity, 
 flowing immediately from the One who is First and Last. 
 
255 
 
 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 
 THE ANIMATED CREATION. 
 
 WE have now to inquire how this view of the constitution 
 and origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon 
 the earth, and his relation to supra-mundane things. 
 
 That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is 
 pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience. Every- 
 where we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary con- 
 dition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is a system 
 of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of facul- 
 ties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When we consult 
 our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a healthy 
 performance of all the functions of the animal economy, God 
 has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment. 
 The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental 
 functions a mind at ease with itself and all around it is in 
 like manner extremely agreeable. This negative class of 
 enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more 
 extensively experienced by the lower animals than by man, 
 at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as 
 their mental and bodily functions are much less liable to 
 derangement than ours. To find the world constituted on 
 this principle is only what in reason we should expect. We 
 cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been created 
 for a contrary purpose. No averagely constituted human 
 
256 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 being would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of pro- 
 ducing a similar system upon an opposite principle. But to 
 form so vast a range of being, and to make being everywhere 
 a source of gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a 
 Creator, in w r hom we are constantly discovering traits of a 
 nature, of which our own is a faint and far-cast shadow. 
 
 It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the 
 many miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves 
 included, occasionally enduring. How, the sage has asked in 
 every age, should a Being so transcendently kind, have 
 allowed of so large an admixture of evil in the condition of 
 his creatures ? Do we not at length find an answer to a 
 certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been 
 given of the constitution of nature ? We there see the Deity 
 operating in the most august of his works by fixed laws, an 
 arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and 
 primary results being good, but disregards exceptions. Now 
 the mechanical laws are so definite in their purposes, that no 
 exceptions ever take place in that department ; if there is a 
 certain quantity of fluid matter to be agglomerated and 
 divided and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so 
 with hair's-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise. But 
 the laws presiding over meteorology, life, and mind, are 
 necessarily less definite, as they have to produce a great 
 variety of mutually related results. Left to act indepen- 
 dently of each other, each according to its separate commis- 
 sion, and each with a wide range of potentiality to be modi- 
 fied by associated conditions, they can only have effects gene- 
 rally beneficial. Often there must be an interference of one 
 law with another ; often a law will chance to operate in 
 excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be pro- 
 duced. Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and 
 the sea is useful as a means of communication between one 
 country and another ; but the natural law r s which produce 
 winds are of indefinite range of action, and sometimes are 
 unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce 
 storms and hurricanes, by which much damage is done ; the 
 sea may be by these causes violently agitated, so that many 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 257 
 
 barks and many lives perish. Here, it is evident, the evil is 
 only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, in the course of 
 the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures 
 his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Two things 
 have been concerned in the case : first, the love of violent 
 exercise, and second, the law of gravitation. Both of these 
 things are good in the main. Boys, in the rash enterprises 
 and rough sports in which they engage, are only making the 
 first delightful trials of a bodily and mental energy which has 
 been bestowed upon them as necessary for their figuring pro- 
 perly in a scene where many energies are called for, and 
 where the exertion of these powers is ever a source of happi- 
 ness. By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies 
 included, are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But 
 when it chances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall 
 say) of the branch of a tree, and has no solid support imme- 
 diately below, the law of gravitation unrelentingly pulls him 
 to the ground, and thus he is hurt. Now it was not a 
 primary object of gravitation to injure boys ; but gravitation 
 could not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being 
 to be universal and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a 
 casual exception from something in the main good. 
 
 The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous 
 of the evils which afflict society. War, it may be said, and 
 said truly, is a tremendous example of evil, in the misery, 
 hardship, waste of human life, and mis-spending of human 
 energies, which it occasions. But what is it that produces 
 war ? Certain tendencies of human nature ; as keen assertion 
 of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acqui- 
 sitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love 
 of excitement. All of these are tendencies which every 
 day, in a legitimate extent of action, produce great and 
 indispensable benefits to us. Man would be a tame, indolent, 
 unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be 
 starvation. War, then, huge evil though it be, is, after all, 
 but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties and 
 powers essentially good. God has given us the tendencies for 
 a benevolent purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute 
 
258 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 obstruction to our misuse of them. That were an arrangement 
 of a kind which he has nowhere made. But he has established 
 many laws in our nature which tend to lessen the frequency and 
 destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason comes to see that 
 war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror. Benevolence inter- 
 poses to make its ravages less mischievous to human comfort, 
 and less destructive to human life. Men begin to find that their 
 more active powers can be exercised with equal gratification 
 on legitimate objects ; for example, in overcoming the natural 
 difficulties of their path through life, or in a generous spirit 
 of emulation in a line of duty beneficial to themselves and 
 their fellow-creatures. Thus, war at length shrinks into a 
 comparatively narrow compass, though there certainly is no 
 reason to suppose that it will be at any early period, if ever, 
 altogether dispensed with, while man's constitution remains 
 as it is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must not 
 limit our view to our own or any past time. Placed upon 
 the earth with faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, 
 and with the more active propensities necessarily in great 
 force to suit the condition of the globe, man was apt to mis- 
 use his powers much in this way at first, compared with 
 what he is likely to do when he advances into a condition of 
 civilization. In the scheme of Providence, thousands of years 
 of frequent warfare, all the so-called glories which fill history, 
 may be but a subordinate consideration. The chronology of 
 God is not as our chronology. See the patience of waiting 
 evinced in the slow development of the animated kingdoms, 
 throughout the long series of geological ages. Nothing is it 
 to him that an entire goodly planet should, for an inconceiv- 
 able period, have no inhabiting organisms superior to reptiles. 
 Progressive, not instant effect, is his sublime rule. What, 
 then, can it be to him that the human race goes through a 
 career of impulsive acting for a few thousand years ? The 
 cruelties of ungoverned anger, the tyrannies of the rude and 
 proud over the humble and good, the martyr's pains, and the 
 patriot's despair, what are all these but incidents of an evolu- 
 tion of superior being which has been pre-arranged and set 
 forward in independent action, free within a certain limit, 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 259 
 
 but in the main constrained, through primordial law, to go 
 on ever brightening and perfecting, yet never, while the pre- 
 sent dispensation of nature shall last, to be quite perfect ! 
 
 The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils. Pro- 
 vidence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision 
 for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all 
 species. The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely 
 as possible, to fill up every vacant piece of space with some 
 sentient being to be a vehicle of enjoyment. Hence this 
 passion is conferred in great force. But the relation between 
 the number of beings, and the means of supporting them, is 
 only on the footing of general law. There may be occasional 
 discrepancies between the laws operating for the multiplica- 
 tion of individuals, and the laws operating to supply them 
 with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in 
 consequence, even in our own highly favoured species. But 
 against all these evils, and against those numberless vexations 
 which have arisen in all ages from the attachment of the 
 sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived 
 from this source the basis of the whole circle of the domestic 
 affections, the sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all 
 our most generous feelings, and even of our most virtuous 
 resolves and exertions and every ill that can be traced to it 
 is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on 
 our guard against judging from what we see in the world at 
 a particular era. As reason and the higher sentiments of 
 man's nature increase in force, this passion is put under 
 better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected 
 with it. The civilized man is more able to give it due con- 
 trol ; his attachments are less the result of impulse : he studies 
 more the weal of his partner and offspring. There are even 
 some of the resentful feelings connected in early society with 
 love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which 
 almost disappear in an advanced state of civilization. The 
 evil springing, in our own species at least, from this passion, 
 mav therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to a particular 
 term of the world's progress, and which may be expected to 
 decrease greatly in amount. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffer- 
 ing to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated 
 but regular process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, 
 and is a source of continual gratification, so long as nothing 
 occurs to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable 
 every moment to be deranged by various external agencies, 
 when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, 
 ceases to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily 
 admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very 
 great ; but, after all, such experiences are no more than occa- 
 sional, and not necessarily frequent exceptions from a general 
 rule of which the direct action is to confer happiness. The 
 human constitution might have been made of a more hardy 
 character ; but we always see hardiness and insensibility go 
 together, and it may be of course presumed that we only 
 could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the 
 expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some 
 of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might 
 have been restricted to definitiveness of action, as is greatly 
 the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should 
 have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to 
 disease ; but in that event we should have been incapable of 
 acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the 
 many high enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties 
 places in our power ; we should not, in short, have been human 
 beings, but merely on a level with the inferior animals. 
 Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man's constitution, 
 that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane 
 economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely 
 delightful sensations it is this which makes him liable to the 
 sufferings of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, 
 that the noxiousness of the agencies producing disease might 
 have been diminished or extinguished ; but the probability is, 
 that this could not have been done without such a derange- 
 ment of the whole economy of nature as would have been 
 attended with more serious evils. For example a large class 
 of diseases are the result of effluvia from decaying organic 
 matter. This kind of matter is known to be extremely useful 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 261 
 
 when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of vegeta- 
 tion. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution 
 done away with, might we not also lose that important 
 quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised 
 from the ground? Perhaps (as has been somewhere sug- 
 gested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to 
 induce us to put away decaying organic substances into the 
 earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man 
 has reason to enable him to see that such substances are 
 beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. 
 He is, as it were, commanded to take the right method in 
 dealing with them. In point of fact, men do not always take 
 this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to 
 gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers 
 and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a 
 temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the 
 general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper 
 measures. And these measures will probably be in time 
 universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases 
 will be altogether or nearly abolished. 
 
 Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement 
 of our personal economy. Eating to excess, eating and 
 drinking what is noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which 
 is necessary for the right action of the functions of the skin, 
 want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs, undue, exces- 
 sive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are 
 all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of 
 the system in which disease consists. Here also it may be 
 said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite mani- 
 festations (vulgo, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid 
 many of these errors ; but here again we are met by the 
 consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should 
 have been only as the lower animals are, wanting that 
 transcendently higher character of sensation and power, by 
 which our enjoyments are made so much greater. In making 
 the desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite mental 
 manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it mainly is 
 amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means 
 
262 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 of deriving far greater gratifications from food (consistently 
 with health) than the lower animals generally appear to be 
 capable of. He has also given us reason to act as a guiding 
 and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that 
 they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady. 
 We can see that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to 
 moderation. We can see that all the things which we feel 
 inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to 
 avoid what are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly 
 skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the 
 proper performance of some of the most important of the 
 organic functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablu- 
 tion, and to a right ventilation of our parlours and sleeping 
 apartments. And so on with the other causes of disease. 
 Reason may not operate very powerfully to these purposes in 
 an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore 
 have been endured from diseases in past ages ; but these are 
 not necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances, 
 reason acquires a greater ascendancy ; the causes of the evils 
 are seen and avoided ; and disease shrinks into a comparatively 
 narrow compass. The experience of our own country places 
 this in a striking light. In the middle ages, when large 
 towns had no police regulations, society was at frequent in- 
 tervals scourged by pestilence. The third part of the people 
 of Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic. 
 Even in London the annual mortality has greatly sunk within 
 a century. The improvement in human life, which has taken 
 place since the construction of the Northampton tables by 
 Dr. Price, is equally remarkable. Modern tables still show 
 a prodigious mortality among the young in all civilized 
 countries evidently a result of some prevalent error in the 
 usual modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there 
 is the sagacity of the human mind, and the desire to adopt 
 any reformed plans which may be shown to be necessary. 
 By a change in the management of an orphan institution 
 in London, during the last fifty years, an immense reduc- 
 tion in the mortality took place. We may of course hope 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 263 
 
 to see measures devised and adopted for producing a similar 
 improvement of infant life throughout the world at large. 
 
 In this part of our subject, the most difficult point cer- 
 tainly lies in those occurrences of disease where the afflicted 
 individual has been in no degree concerned in bringing the 
 visitation upon himself. Daily experience shows us infec- 
 tious disease arising in a place where the natural laws in 
 respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading into 
 regions where there is no blame of this kind. We then see 
 the innocent suffering equally with those who may be called 
 the guilty. Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to 
 succour the miserable beings whose error may have caused 
 the mischief, is sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while 
 many of his patients recover. We are also only too familiar 
 with the transmission of diseases from erring parents to inno- 
 cent children, who accordingly suffer, and perhaps die pre- 
 maturely, as it were for the sins of others. After all, how- 
 ever painful such cases may be in contemplation, they cannot 
 be regarded in any other light than as exceptions from ar- 
 rangements, the general working of which is beneficial. 
 
 With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, 
 there is one important consideration which is pressed upon 
 us from many quarters namely, that moral conditions have 
 not the least concern in the working of the physical laws. 
 These arrangements proceed with an entire independence 
 of all such conditions, and desirably so, for otherwise there 
 could be no certain dependence placed upon them. Thus it 
 may happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, 
 the one a virtuous, the other a vicious man, the former, being 
 the less cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, 
 falls, and is killed, while the other, choosing a better footing, 
 remains uninjured. It is not in what we can conceive of the 
 nature of things, that there should be a special exemption 
 from the ordinary laws of matter, to save this virtuous man. 
 So it might be that, of two physicians, attending fever cases, 
 in a mean part of a large city, the one, an excellent citizen, 
 may stand in such a position with respect to the beds of the 
 
264 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 patients as to catch the infection, of which he dies in a few 
 days, while the other, a bad husband and father, and who, 
 unlike the other, only attends such cases with selfish ends, 
 takes care to be as much as possible out of the stream of in- 
 fection, and accordingly escapes. In both of these cases 
 man's sense of good and evil his faculty of conscientiousness 
 would incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction 
 and save the virtuous. But the Great Ruler of Nature does 
 not act on such principles. He has established laws for the 
 operation of inanimate matter, which are quite unswerving, 
 so that, when we know them, we have only to act in a certain 
 way with respect to them, in order to obtain all the benefits 
 and avoid all the evils connected with them. He has likewise 
 established moral laws in our nature, which are equally un- 
 swerving, (allowing for their wider range of action,) and 
 from obedience to which unfailing good is to be derived. 
 But the two sets of laws are independent of each other. Obe- 
 dience to each gives only its own proper advantage, not the 
 advantage proper to the other. Hence it is that virtue forms 
 no protection against the evils connected with the physical 
 laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled in, and atten- 
 tive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful of his neigh- 
 bour, is in like manner not protected by his attention to phy- 
 sical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect 
 or breach of the moral laws. 
 
 Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the 
 faults of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is 
 evidently a consideration quite apart from that suffering. 
 
 In short, the whole question of evil, a puzzle throughout 
 all ages, only becomes explicable when we receive and study 
 the system of a mundane government in the manner of law. 
 There is no need for considering it as a detraction from either 
 the power or the goodness of God. The dispensation under which 
 we live has been constituted by him on the principle of law; but 
 this is not necessarily to imply that either his goodness or his 
 power is to stop at this point. That such, however, is the 
 character of the pageantry of worldly events now passing, is 
 the only idea we can arrive at when we approach the ques- 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 265 
 
 tion without prejudice. How else should it be that in any 
 case the guilty flourish and the innocent suffer ? How else 
 should it be that men often endure bitter woe and pain while 
 prosecuting the noblest objects ? How else should we ever 
 see so simple an event as the following, which meets my eyes 
 in the journals, while these sheets pass through the press : 
 A multitude of poor Irish emigrants are embarked in a canal 
 boat, about to leave their native district for a port whence 
 they are to sail for America. At the moment of parting, 
 they crowd to one side, to shake hands for the last time with 
 their friends. The vessel is overbalanced and turned upon 
 its side. Of the multitude thrown into the water, seven are 
 taken up dead. Here an action rather amiable and laudable 
 than otherwise, leads to the loss of life, a pure evil, unmixed 
 with good. It is impossible to imagine such a transaction 
 occurring under the immediate direction of the Deity ; it 
 would be profaning human nature to attribute any such act 
 to the immediate command or interference of a man. But 
 there is no difficulty in understanding how such occasional 
 evils should take place in the course of a chain of causes 
 which only proceed in consequence of a general impulse de- 
 signed in the main for good. 
 
 Evil, indeed, is one of the strongest proofs that could be 
 desired for the reality of this system. We see it in one of its 
 most familiar forms in the destructive animals. An innocent 
 little bird in the claws of the cruel hawk a poor stag grasped 
 by the ruthless boa a lamb in the fangs of the wolf can 
 we imagine a form of misery greater than these animals ? 
 Yet millions of such creatures perish in this manner annually, 
 and have so done since long before there existed a human 
 heart to pine or break with its more sentimental, but not less 
 real wretchedness. Upon no theory can this be understood 
 except upon that of an economy governed by general laws. 
 The carnivorous animals are simply the police and under- 
 takers of the inferior creation, preventing their too great in- 
 crease, and clearing off all such as grow weakly and die, ere 
 they can become in any degree a burden to themselves or a 
 nuisance to other creatures. For these functions the destruc- 
 
266 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 tive tribes have been expressly organized, and their organiza- 
 tion of course is of divine appointment. Constituted as we 
 are, we cannot suppose a plan involving so much suffering to 
 have been adopted except with a view to that independency, 
 or completeness within itself, which is here argued for as the 
 manner in which the Deity's operations on earth are revealed 
 to us. He has endowed the families which enjoy his bounties 
 with an almost indefinite fecundity, that enjoyment may be as 
 widely diffused as possible ; but the limitation of the results of 
 this fecundity within the line necessary according to circum- 
 stances, were no right immediate employment for himself. 
 The object is accomplished, in a befitting manner, by his 
 ordaining that certain other animals shall have endowments 
 sure so to act as to bring the rest of animated beings to a 
 proper balance. And the object is accomplished well ; inso- 
 much that we never hear of any but the most partial and 
 transient discrepancy between the volume of inferior animal 
 life and the power appointed for its regulation. Even in this 
 painful chapter of nature, we are forced to acknowledge 
 that, upon the theory of law, everything is very good. 
 
 Another proof, or rather another branch of the same proof, 
 lies in the relation of the individual to the mass, as far as en- 
 dowment and destiny are concerned. We see, for example, 
 powerful impulses in human nature, which often occasion 
 great inconveniences both to those yielding to them and to 
 others. But such impulses are in the main necessary. De- 
 structive, in many cases, to the individual, they are conserva- 
 tive with respect to the totality. What is this but an appoint- 
 ment to render the machine in that respect (so to speak) a 
 self-acting one ? Many of the confusions of the moral scene 
 might be thus explained ; but it is also to be observed that 
 such impulses are not sent alone they come in company with 
 intelligence and moral emotion, powers continually tending 
 more and more to soften and regulate their actions. 
 
 Nor are any of the ordinary evils of our world altogether 
 unmixed. God, contemplating apparently the unbending 
 action of his great laws, has established others which appear 
 to be designed to have a compensating, a repairing, and a 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 267 
 
 consoling effect. Suppose, for instance, that, from a defect 
 in the power of development in a mother, her offspring is 
 ushered into the world destitute of some of the most useful 
 members, or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is 
 ever to be found in the parents and other relatives, and in the 
 surrounding public, a sympathy with the sufferer, which 
 tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he usually is in 
 the long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence im- 
 planted in our nature seems to be an arrangement having for 
 one of its principal objects to cause us, by sympathy and 
 active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably suffered by our 
 fellow -creatures in the course of the operation of the other 
 natural laws. And even in the sufferer himself, it is often 
 found that a defect in one point is made up for by an extra 
 power in another. The blind come to have a sense of touch 
 much more acute than those who see. Persons born without 
 hands have been known to acquire a power of using their 
 feet for a number of the principal offices usually served by 
 that member. I need hardly say how remarkably fatuity is 
 compensated by the more than usual regard paid to the 
 children born with it by their parents, and the zeal which 
 others usually feel to protect and succour such persons. In 
 short, we never see evil of any kind take place where there is 
 not some remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere 
 for its alleviation. And there can be no doubt that in this 
 manner suffering of all kinds is very much relieved. 
 
 We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres de- 
 signed for the residence of animated sentient beings, placed 
 there with this as their first and most obvious purpose to be 
 sensible of enjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in 
 relation to external things. The faculties of the various 
 species are very different, but the happiness of each depends 
 on the harmony there may be between its particular faculties 
 and its particular circumstances. For instance, place the 
 small-brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully 
 enjoys this harmony of relation ; but man, having many more 
 faculties, cannot be thus contented. Besides having a suffi- 
 ciency of food and bodily comfort, he must have entertain- 
 
268 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 ment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the do- 
 mestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments. He is 
 also a progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not 
 please him to-morrow ; but in each case he demands a sphere 
 of appropriate conditions in order to be happy. By virtue 
 of his superior organization, his enjoyments are much higher 
 and more varied than those of any of the lower animals ; but 
 the very complexity of circumstances affecting him renders 
 it at the same time unavoidable, that his nature should be often 
 inharmoniously placed and disagreeably affected, and that he 
 should therefore be unhappy. Still, unhappiness amongst 
 mankind is the exception from the rule of their condition, 
 and an exception which is capable of almost infinite diminu- 
 tion, by virtue of the improving reason of man, and the experi- 
 ence which he acquires in working out the problems of society. 
 To secure the immediate means of happiness, it would seem 
 to be necessary for men first to study with all care the con- 
 stitution of nature ; and, secondly, to accommodate themselves 
 to that constitution, so as to obtain all the realizable advan- 
 tages from acting conformably to it, and to avoid all likely 
 evils from disregarding it. It will be of no use to sit down 
 and expect that things are to operate of their own accord, or 
 through the direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; 
 equally so were it to expose ourselves to palpable dangers, 
 under the notion that we shall, for some reason, have a 
 dispensation or exemption from them : we must endeavour so 
 to place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangements which 
 Providence has made impartially for all may be in our favour, 
 and not against us ; such are the only means by which we can 
 obtain good and avoid evil here below. ( 101 ) And, in doing 
 this, it is especially necessary that care be taken to avoid 
 interfering with the like efforts of other men, beyond what 
 may have been agreed upon by the mass as necessary for the 
 general good. Such interferences, tending in any way to 
 injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or to the 
 injury of society in general, tend to reflect evil upon ourselves 
 through the re-action which they produce in the feelings of 
 our neighbour and of society, and also the offence which they 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 269 
 
 give to our own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the 
 other hand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our 
 fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action 
 of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards our 
 own benefit. The one course of action tends to the injury, 
 the other to the benefit of ourselves and others. By the one 
 course, the general design of the Creator towards his creatures 
 is thwarted ; by the other, it is favoured. And thus we can 
 readily see the most substantial grounds for regarding all 
 moral emotions and doings as divine in their nature, and as a 
 means of rising to and communing with God. Obedience is 
 not selfishness, which it would otherwise be it is worship. 
 The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense of this 
 philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more 
 clearly as men advance in intelligence. Nor are individuals 
 alone concerned here. The same rule applies as between one 
 great body or class of men and another, and also between 
 nations. Thus, if one set of men keep others in the condition 
 of slaves this being a gross injustice to the subjected party, 
 the mental manifestations of that party to the masters will be 
 such as to mar the comfort of their lives ; the minds of the 
 masters themselves will be degraded by the association with 
 beings so degraded ; and thus, with some immediate or appa- 
 rent benefit from keeping slaves, there will be in a far greater 
 degree an experience of evil. So also, if one portion of a 
 nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp 
 at some advantages injurious to the other sections of the 
 people, the first effect will be an injury to those other portions 
 of the nation, and the second a re-active injury to the 
 injurers, making their guilt their punishment. And so when 
 one nation commits an aggression upon the property or rights 
 of another, or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious 
 policy, the effects are sure to be redoubled evil from the 
 offended party. All of these things are under laws which 
 make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain ; and an 
 individual, a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with 
 safety, than I could with safety place my leg in the track of a 
 coming wain, or attempt to fast thirty days. We have been 
 
270 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 constituted on the principle of only being able to realize 
 happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures are also 
 happy ; it is therefore necessary that we both do to others 
 only as we would have others to do to us, and endeavour 
 to promote their happiness as well as our own. There is 
 even a higher law, which has long been announced, but 
 never acted on to any considerable extent, that our greatest 
 happiness is not to be realized by each having a regard for 
 himself, but by each seeking primarily to benefit his fellow- 
 creatures. When man comes to have confidence in his own 
 nature, he will begin to act on this principle, and the result 
 will be a degree of happiness such as we only see at present 
 faintly shadowed forth in the purest and sweetest charities of 
 life a happiness from which there will be no class excep- 
 tions. 
 
 The question whether the human race will ever advance far 
 beyond its present position in intellect and morals, is one 
 which has engaged much attention. Judging from the past, 
 we cannot reasonably doubt that great advances are yet to be 
 made ; but if the principle of development be admitted, these 
 are certain, whatever may be the space of time required for 
 their realization. A progression resembling development 
 may be traced in human nature, both in the individual and in 
 large groups of men. The individual is in childhood under 
 the influence of the propensities and instinctive aptitudes ; in 
 youth, he is swayed by marvellousness, the love of the beau- 
 tiful, the imaginative ; in full maturity, he passes under 
 (comparatively) the domination of reason. In perfect ana- 
 logy, a nation is at first impulsive and unreasoning ; afterwards 
 it is conducted by the second class of sentiments, (the age of 
 mythologies, hierocracies, man and idea worships;) finally, 
 its institutions approximate to an accurate regard for 
 what is convenient and profitable, under the control of justice 
 and humanity. The advance of knowledge favours the 
 progress of the moral conditions, and in improved moral 
 conditions knowledge becomes more sound. In tolerably 
 favourable circumstances, this tendency onward never fails to 
 make itself visible ; and it is evident that, though many 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 271 
 
 nations seem nearly stationary and others appear to retro- 
 grade, there is always a progress in some place, so that no 
 long space of time ever elapses without showing, upon the 
 whole, a certain advance. By the work of our thoughtful 
 brains and busy hands, we modify external nature in a way 
 never known before. Under the operations of tillage, of 
 mechanism, of building, making, and inventing ; of those 
 applications of natural powers and forces which human wit 
 turns to account in so many ways ; of all the results of social 
 experience, of knowledge, and of arrangement ; the earth tends 
 to become a much serener field of existence than it was in the 
 earlier ages of man's history. Its progress in this respect 
 may not be clearly seen at a particular time, through the 
 obscuring effect of temporary and accidental causes ; but that 
 the tendency of the physical improvements wrought by man 
 upon the surface, and of the mechanic movements which he 
 invents for the saving of his own labour, is to improve the 
 daily comforts, and allow room for the intellectual and moral 
 advancement of earth's children, cannot be denied without 
 something like flying in the face of Providence itself. These 
 improvements, then, thus partly wrought out by the exertions 
 of the present race, I conceive as at once preparations for, 
 and causes of, the possible development of higher types of 
 humanity, beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our 
 nature, physical nature giving less matter for that nature to 
 contend with and subdue to its needs, more strong in the 
 reasoning and the moral, because there will be less of the 
 opposite to give these marring or check, more fitted for the 
 delights of social life, because society will then present less 
 to dread and more to love. 
 
 The history and constitution of the world have now been 
 explained according to the best lights which a humble indi- 
 vidual has found within the reach of his perceptive and 
 reasoning faculties. We have seen a system in which all is 
 regularity and order, and all flows from and is obedient to a 
 divine code of laws of unbending operation. We are to un- 
 derstand from what has been laid before us, that man, with 
 his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural problem, 
 
272 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 
 
 of which the elements can be taken cognizance of by science, 
 and that all the secular destinies of our race, from gene- 
 ration to generation, are but evolutions from a primal 
 arrangement in the counsels of Deity. To many, at first 
 sight, it is apt to appear as a dreary view of the divine 
 economy of our world, as if it placed God at an immeasur- 
 able distance from his creatures, and left them without refuge 
 or remedy from the numberless ills that " flesh is heir to," 
 and which no one can hope altogether to escape. But in 
 reality, God may be presumed to be revealed to us in every 
 one of the phenomena of the system, in the suspension of 
 globes in space, in the degradation of rocks and the upthrow- 
 ing of mountains, in the development of plants and animals, 
 in each movement of our minds, and in all that we enjoy and 
 suffer, seeing that, the system requiring a sustainer as well as 
 an originator, he must be continually present in every part of 
 it, albeit he does not permit a single law to swerve in any 
 case from its appointed course of operation. Thus, we may 
 still feel that He is the immediate breather of our life and 
 ruler of our spirits, that we may, by rightly directed thought, 
 come into communion with him, and feel that, even when his 
 penal ordinances are enforced upon us, his hand and arm are 
 closely about us. Nor is this all. It may be that, while we 
 are committed to take our chance in a natural system of un- 
 deviating operation, and are left, with apparent ruthlessness, 
 to endure the consequences of every collision into which we 
 knowingly or unknowingly come with each of its regulations, 
 there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of 
 nature, towards which we stand in a peculiar class of rela- 
 tions, which is capable of compensating for all casualties 
 endured here, and whose very largeness is what makes these 
 casualties a matter of indifference to God. For the existence 
 of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is indeed a 
 powerful argument. The reasoning- may proceed thus : the 
 system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading 
 principle in the Divine Mind. But that system is at the 
 same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of 
 invariable operation. To reconcile this to the character of 
 
OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 273 
 
 the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system 
 is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that 
 the Redress is in reserve. Another argument here occurs 
 the economy of nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its 
 extent as it is, does not satisfy even man's idea of what might 
 be ; he feels that, if this multiplicity of theatres for the exem- 
 plification of such phenomena as we see on earth were to go 
 on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of the Being 
 capable of creating it. An endless monotony of human gene- 
 rations, with their humble thinkings and doings, even though 
 liable to a certain improvement, seems an object beneath that 
 august Being. But the mundane economy might be very 
 well as a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of 
 which was yet to be evolved. Our system, therefore, though 
 it may at first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem 
 amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them, 
 and even to give them support. I would say, in conclusion, 
 that, even where the two above arguments may fail of effect, 
 there may yet be a faith derived from this view of nature suf- 
 ficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, 
 the calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being. 
 For let us but fully and truly consider what a system is here 
 laid open to view, and we cannot well doubt that we are in 
 the hands of One who is both able and willing to do us the 
 most entire justice. Surely in such a faith we may well rest 
 at ease, even though life should have been to us but a pro- 
 tracted malady, or though every hope we had built on the 
 secular materials within our reach were felt to be melting 
 from our grasp. Thinking of all the contingencies of this 
 world as to be in time melted into or lost in some greater 
 system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait 
 the end with patience, and be of good cheer. 
 
274 
 
 NOTE CONCLUSORY. 
 
 RE-WRITTEN FOR THE SIXTH EDITION. 
 
 THE original note conclusory stated that this work had been 
 composed in solitude, and with hardly the cognizance of a 
 single fellow-being, for the sole purpose (or as nearly so as 
 might be) of adding to the knowledge of mankind, judging 
 their happiness to be improveable through that medium. It 
 was published anonymously, and the author expected not ever 
 to respond to one word of approbation, or to parry or depre- 
 cate any adverse criticism. His name was likely to remain 
 in its original obscurity, and never to be generally known. 
 He also stated that he was prepared to find the book unsuc- 
 cessful in drawing attention, but that, with an author so cir- 
 cumstanced, this could excite no regret, except for the failure 
 of his wish to promote the public benefit by making an advance 
 towards a true view of the system of the world. 
 
 I have now to refer to facts since emerged, that the work 
 attracted an unusual degree of attention, and met with much 
 opposition. On the first I have no remarks to make, except 
 that it is gratifying to find that the subject is safe from ever 
 falling into the oblivion which originally appeared its most 
 likely fate. On the second I have to observe that, if I could 
 have convinced myself that one-third of the objections to the 
 theory were just, I should unhesitatingly have abandoned it. 
 
NOTE CONCLUSORY. 275 
 
 I gave these objections a careful study ; endeavoured to judge 
 of them dispassionately, and to allow them the utmost pos- 
 sible weight ; I deeply pondered on the consequences which 
 might flow from error in a question of such importance. 
 But to whatever cause attributable and I am quite prepared 
 to hear a derogatory one attributed so it is, that I have never 
 for a moment seen reason to doubt that the view of nature 
 presented in this volume is in the main right. 
 
 To take these criticisms somewhat in detail. A large por- 
 tion of them referred to particular illustrations of the argu- 
 ment facts, or supposed facts in science which either were 
 incorrectly stated, or incorrectly applied, or perhaps were 
 dissented from by some scientific men while assented to by 
 others. Without the least regard to the strength of the 
 general argument, or the force of other illustrations, an ex- 
 ception was taken, on the strength of these, to the whole 
 work. What was to be expected from me in this case? 
 Surely not to abandon the general argument, which remained 
 untouched. It seemed enough to dismiss or rectify the chal- 
 lenged facts, and leave the book otherwise as it was. This I 
 have done. 
 
 Another set of objections was of a more positive nature. It 
 was said that the highest invertebrates came at the beginning. 
 Of the fishes the highest were first. The earliest reptiles had 
 the highest kind of teeth. There was no imperfection, no 
 appearance of a rude first effort of nature, in the earliest 
 animals. The progress, too, was not uniformly shaded, but 
 contained great breaks and blanks which no theory of develop- 
 ment could account for. Was I to give way to these objec- 
 tions, presented by persons who, in their eagerness to magnify 
 them, almost sank out of sight the great facts that inverte- 
 brates preceded vertebrates, and that the latter, as far as 
 classes, at least, were concerned, came in the succession of an 
 improved organization? Holding rather to the great and 
 indubitable facts, I thought it well to examine carefully the 
 strength of those smaller ones which were thought adverse. 
 The consequence was the discovery that some of the objections 
 rested on false or partial views of science (see Note 55), and 
 
 T2 
 
276 NOTE CONCLUSORY. 
 
 that others were grounded on false assumptions regarding the 
 theory itself. For instance, there is nothing in it to imply 
 that the early animals were imperfect or of rude form ; they 
 only are low in the scale. Neither does the development 
 theory forbid that the early lacertine sauria should have had 
 better teeth than the same family in our own time ; the 
 explanation is, that the transitions from class to class were, 
 in general, comparatively great advances in development, and 
 comparatively independent of physical conditions, while some 
 of the inferior mutations were, partly through the agency of 
 physical conditions, towards a reduction in some of the ex- 
 ternal features of organization, particularly in the teeth and 
 the character of the locomotive system ; nature being, as was 
 said from the first in this work, alike willing to go forward 
 and to go back, at least within a certain range. Partly by 
 this general width of class transitions, were the so-called breaks 
 to be accounted for for example, that which seems to isolate 
 the birds. Partly, these breaks were owing to blanks in the 
 series of deposits, as suggested by some of the geologists 
 themselves. It therefore seemed sufficient, with regard to 
 this class of objections, to present the statements to which 
 they refer in such a manner and with such explanations as 
 might quietly set them aside. This I have likewise done. 
 
 The rest of the opposition was solely based in preconceptions 
 of a different nature with regard to the history of the world. 
 Here the only question, of course, was as to the comparative 
 strength of the grounds for these preconceptions. Did they 
 rest on positive natural evidence ? were they more in harmony 
 with what is ascertained in science than my views ? It was 
 always assumed that these preconceptions were of good founda- 
 tion of one kind or another ; but the assumption could bear 
 no examination. View for a moment the objection from scrip- 
 ture : the same would hold equally well against the heliocen- 
 tric theory of the solar system, or the now undoubted fact that 
 the earth passed through mutations extending to many thou- 
 sand years, before the existence of man ! As to the geologists' 
 notion of successive creations by special fiat, it is but a notion 
 in itself, and one not over consistent with facts (see pp. 51, 52), 
 
NOTE CONCLUSORY. 277 
 
 not to speak of its gross inconsistence as an event with the 
 origin of the physical arrangements of the universe. It was 
 said, " we must reason from what we know to what we do not 
 know. We see no species originate or change in our time, 
 nor in some species has there been any change during two or 
 three thousand years." But, what if the transactions contem- 
 plated were of such a nature that we could expect no imme- 
 diate trace of them in our time, or that a thousand times three 
 thousand years were insufficient to realize them before our 
 eyes ? Very right to reason from what we know to what we 
 do not know ; but in this case let it be from the material 
 to the organic arrangements, from the embryotic progress of 
 a single being to that of the animal kingdom. Let us take 
 the facts we have, and not clamour vainly for others which are 
 unattainable. Let us judge not from a few isolated difficul- 
 ties, perhaps engendered by our ignorance, but from the 
 bearing of the whole facts, contemplated as if we had had no 
 preconception on the subject. This I have all along done, and 
 I have done nothing more. 
 
 Thus it is that the work maintains its original ground, with- 
 out one material alteration, although with many minor modi- 
 fications designed to render it more convincing and less as- 
 sailable. Far, far it must still be from that completeness and 
 accuracy which a more experienced student of science could 
 give it ; still farther is it from what such a work might be in 
 the next age. Yet, such as it is, I once more present it with 
 unabated confidence in its general truth as a theory, and in its 
 power of beneficially affecting the opinions of my fellow- 
 creatures. As yet opposition has only tended to results which 
 have fortified the argument. Let it continue, and all of it that 
 is just will produce no effect but that of clearing away more 
 and more of the mists which prevent scientific men from see- 
 ing the true lineaments of nature. For my own part, I can 
 only congratulate myself on the difficulties which have been 
 conjured by truth and by prejudice into my path, since all of 
 them have been found superable. I can only rejoice in having 
 been led to additional study, which has shown me the world 
 of the past more and more in harmony with that of the passing 
 
278 NOTE CONCLUSORY. 
 
 time ; impressing the unchangeableness of nature within any 
 age which we can grasp, and deepening all reasons for a per- 
 fect trust in nature's author. It is a smaller advantage, and 
 perhaps will appear a more doubtful one, that the discussion 
 has led to views respecting the varieties of animated being 
 which tend greatly to simplify that subject. With these re- 
 marks with a mind sensitive only to the fear of error, but 
 calm in the conviction of truth and the beneficence and beauty 
 of whatever is true willing to think the best of other men's 
 opinions, and claiming, in the spirit of social kindness, tole- 
 rance for my own I respectfully take my leave. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 (1.) See address of Sir John Herschel to the Astronomical Society 
 of London, (1841), in the Transactions of that body, vol. xii. 
 
 (2.) Professor Mosotti, on the Constitution of the Sidereal System, 
 of which the sun forms a part. Lond. Ed. and Dub. Philosophical 
 Magazine. Feb. 1843. 
 
 (3.) Sir John Herschel's Address, ut supra. 
 
 (4.) There is an exception, but doubtless apparent only, in the 
 motion of the satellites of Uranus, which, compared with the rest, 
 is retrograde. The axes of the planets are, as is well known, at 
 various degrees of inclination to their orbits ; for which there must 
 have been a cause in the circumstances under which the planets were 
 produced. The axis of Uranus is removed but eleven degrees from 
 the plane of his orbit : I suggest, as the explanation of the apparent 
 exception, that what we call the north pole of this planet is in reality 
 the south, the axis having passed across the plane of the orbit, so 
 that the planet may be said to be in that small measure upside down. 
 It will be observed, that between the admitted and the suggested 
 arrangement, there is only a difference of 22 degrees. 
 
 (5.) A fifth member of this community was announced by M. 
 Henke in December 1845. 
 
 In September 1846, a new planet of greater magnitude was dis- 
 covered beyond Uranus. Till our knowledge of this stranger is 
 somewhat greater and more settled, the text may be left undisturbed. 
 But it is meanwhile worthy of remark, tbat the extent of the solar 
 system is now double what it was supposed to be. 
 
 (6.) Treatise on Astronomy. 
 
 (7.) See " Professor Plateau, on the Phenomena presented by a 
 free Liquid Mass withdrawn from the action of Gravity." Taylor's 
 Scientific Memoirs, Nov. 1844. 
 
 (8.) Among the most extraordinary phenomena of natural science 
 
280 NOTES. 
 
 must be placed those relating to the fall of meteoric stones. The 
 fact itself, so long doubted, has now been established by an accumu- 
 lation of the most positive and unexceptionable evidence. The stones 
 have been seen to fall, and taken up in a still heated state ; there 
 can be no manner of doubt about the fact, although the explanation 
 is extremely difficult. All these stones are found on examination to 
 resemble each other in their general characters ; they usually consist 
 of an earthy material, having disseminated through its substance 
 globules and small masses of metallic iron containing nickel in the 
 state of alloy. The stones are often covered by a thin vitreous crust, 
 as if partial fusion had commenced. It is well known, also, that 
 large masses of soft, malleable iron, also containing nickel, are found 
 in several places far removed from each other, lying loose upon the 
 earth, as in South America and in Siberia, and no doubt can exist of 
 the meteoric origin of these masses. It has been conjectured that 
 these meteoric stones proceed from the moon, having been shot out 
 from volcanoes with such violence as to be brought within the reach 
 of the earth's attraction. A view now more generally received sup- 
 poses the existence in space of very numerous small bodies, moving 
 in more or less regular orbits around the sun and larger planets, which 
 at certain periods undergo such perturbation that their motion be- 
 comes completely deranged, and they at length fall upon the surface 
 of the earth or other planet, whose attraction has been the exciting 
 cause of the derangement of their orbits. Whatever may be their 
 real origin, they are by common consent looked upon as foreign to 
 the earth : their physical constitution is completely different from 
 any known minerals. But what is exceedingly remarkable, and par- 
 ticularly worthy of notice as strengthening the argument that all the 
 members of the solar system, and perhaps of other systems, have a 
 similar constitution, no new elements are found in these bodies ; they 
 contain the ordinary materials of the earth, but associated in a man- 
 ner altogether new, and unlike anything known in terrestrial miner- 
 alogy. Note by a Correspondent. 
 
 (9.) The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the 
 late Baron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences 
 of Paris. See his Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur, 1822. 
 
 (10.) See Geological Researches by Sir Henry de la Beche, 1834. 
 
 (11.) That the rocks anterior to the protozoic may represent a 
 time of earlier life is admitted by Sir E. Murchison, who, speaking 
 of the Lower Silurian rocks which he examined in Sweden, says, 
 " We have come to the conclusion that the lowest of these beds that 
 are fossiliferous are the exact equivalents of the Lower Silurian strata 
 of the British Isles, and that they have been formed out of, and rest 
 upon slaty and other rocks, which had undergone crystallization 
 before their particles were ground up to compose the earliest beds in 
 which the remains of organic life appear. We apply to these crys- 
 
NOTES. 281 
 
 taline masses, therefore, the term Azoic, simply to express that, 
 tthile as far as research has hitherto gone no vestiges of living things 
 have been found in them, so also, from their nature, they seem to 
 have been formed under such accompanying conditions of intense heat 
 and fusion, that it is hopeless to attempt to find in them traces of 
 organization." Quar, Jour, of Geol. Society, i. 475. 
 
 (12.) Ansted's Geology, i. 60. 
 
 (13.) See De la Beche's Geological Researches. 
 
 (14.) Mr. Homer, president of the Geological Society, in his 
 address, February, 1846, speaking on this subject, and remarking on 
 the proofs afforded by the sub-silurian rocks, of the existence at that 
 time of land and water, says, " Is it not highly improbable that this 
 sea was untenanted ?" And then he proceeds to recal the observa- 
 tions made by Professor Edward Forbes, as to a depth of sea below 
 which no life exists. The seas of that age, in the districts hitherto 
 examined, might be seas too deep to afford a proper habitat for any 
 plants or animals. 
 
 (15.) Murchison's Geology of Eussia in Europe. 
 
 (16.) Emmerich on the Morphology of the Trilobites. Taylor's 
 Scientific Memoirs, Aug. 1845. 
 
 (17.) Lyell, Travels in North America. 
 
 (18.) Murchison's Silurian System and Geology of Russia in 
 Europe. 
 
 (19.) The head fountain of information on the early fishes is M. 
 Agassiz's Poissons Fossiles, a splendid but not readily accessible 
 book. For more popular descriptions, reference may be made to 
 " New Walks in an Old Field, by Hugh Miller," and to Jameson's 
 Journal, July and October, 1844. See also the excellent manual of 
 Professor Ansted. 
 
 (20.) Ansted's Geology, i. 185. 
 
 (21.) See some remarks on the grade of the cartilaginous fishes 
 in a subsequent note. 
 
 (22.) Buffon's History of the Earth. 
 
 (23.) Mr. Lyell tells us that remains of plants allied to the lepi- 
 dodendron, one developed on a large scale afterwards, are found in 
 America, in rocks thought to be Upper Silurian. To these are added 
 forms in the lowest Devonian strata of that country. 
 
282 NOTES. 
 
 (24.) From the experiment of Professor Lindley, which seemed to 
 prove that dicotyledonous trees perish in water sooner than the 
 monocotyledons, it has been said that, probably, we only find the 
 carbonigenous vegetation to be lowly because the higher trees were 
 incapable of being preserved. It is, however, remarkable, that the 
 dicotyledons abound in the tertiary strata, which could hardly have 
 been the case if they were incapable of resisting the effects of 
 water. The objectors would need, at least, to account for these 
 trees withstanding dissolution in that age, if they are to be supposed 
 to have perished so readily in the earlier epoch. It is also to be 
 remarked, that the dicotyledons do exist in the carbonigenous era ; 
 only they are extremely few. Finding simple sea-plants in the 
 earlier fossiliferous strata and dicotyledons abundant in the last, 
 while the intermediate carbonic period presents the intermediate 
 kinds of plants in abundance, and only a scantling of any higher 
 forms, it appears the most legitimate inference in the case, that the 
 earth has witnessed a botanical progress connected with time, and 
 only reached the highest vegetable forms at a comparatively recent 
 period; thus presenting a history entirely analogous to what 
 geology shows us of the animal kingdom. 
 
 (25.) A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the British 
 Museum, is forty-five feet high. 
 
 (26.) SeeWitham on the Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables, 
 1834. 
 
 (27.) See remarks on the period of occurrence of sauroid fishes 
 in a subsequent note. 
 
 (28.) " Two species [of insects], belonging to the family of Cur- 
 culionidae, have been found in the coal-fields of Coalbrook Dale, as 
 well as a neuropterous insect, which closely resembles the genus 
 Corydalis now living in Carolina; also a libellula, or an insect 
 related to the Phasmidae. * * Count Sternberg has likewise 
 announced the discovery of a fossil scorpion in the coal-measures at 
 Chomle, near Badnitz, in Bohemia. It is easily conceivable that, as 
 insects could only leave traces of their existence in exceptional and 
 very rare instances, it is very improbable that we should ever have a 
 satisfactory knowledge of this part of the fauna of the ancient forma- 
 tions." D'Archiac and De Vernevil on the Fossils of the Older 
 Deposits, <tc. Geol Trans, vi. (2rf ser.) 330. 
 
 (29.) In Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, foot-marks, in- 
 cluding those of a biped animal, apparently of the order Grallee, 
 besides several reptilian vestiges, have been found in strata of the 
 carboniferous era " a coarse-grained sandstone about 150 feet 
 beneath the largest of our coal-seams, and near 800 feet beneath the 
 topmost stratum of the coal formation." The reptilian foot-marks 
 
NOTES. 283 
 
 exhibit a ball with five toe-marks, circular and elongated, placed in 
 radiating fashion before it. In similar strata, at another place, are 
 footsteps of a different kind, resembling the human hand, with the 
 rudiment of a sixth toe at the side, opposite that presenting what 
 stands for the thumb. Silliman's Journal, April 1845. 
 
 These markings point most probably to batrachian reptiles. The 
 existence of birds at so early a period, especially after the celebrated 
 Wealden relics are set down as belonging to pterodactyles, would 
 require strong evidence. 
 
 (30.) Volcanic disturbances break up the rocks; the pieces are 
 worn in seas ; and a deposit of conglomerate is the consequence. 
 Of porphyry, there are some such pieces in the conglomerate of 
 Devonshire, three or four tons in weight. 
 
 (31.) Literally red dead Hers ; that is, strata of red colour, and 
 having no remains of living things in them. 
 
 (32.) Murchison's Geology of Russia in Europe. 
 
 (33.) See eundem; also Mr. Homer's address as president of 
 the Geological Society, Feb. 1846. 
 
 Russia presents another notable example of a change of fossils in 
 a conformable series of strata ; that is, a series showing no record of 
 volcanic disturbances. This takes place between the Devonian and 
 Carboniferous formations. " The uppermost beds of the Devonian," 
 says Sir R. Murchison, "loaded with Holoptychius and Onchus, 
 Coccosteus, Placosteus, and Dendrodus, are at once conformably 
 surmounted by strata containing the most universally diffused car- 
 boniferous types. In short, fishes identical with those of the Old 
 Red Sandstone of Scotland are invariably surmounted by the 
 Stigmaria Jicoides and the large Producti of our British mountain 
 limestone ; and thus the examination of Russia has taught us, not 
 only in this instance, but also in the overlying Permian succession, 
 that the great changes in animal life have not been dependent on 
 physical revolutions of the surface, but are distinct creations, inde- 
 pendent of any proximate local causes ; though I would by no 
 means pretend to say that the grand operations of change which 
 have affected the conterminous regions of Russia did not tend to 
 produce these results." 
 
 (34.) Dr. Buckland (Bridgewater Treatise) quoting an article by 
 Professor Hitchcock in the American Journal of Sciences, 1836. 
 
 (35.) Murchison's Silurian System. 
 
 (36.) Bucklaud, Bridgewater Treatise. 
 
 (37.) Murchison's Geology of Russia in Europe. 
 
284 NOTES. 
 
 (38.) Fragments attributed to a cetaceous animal, another humble 
 form of the mammal class, have likewise been found in the great 
 oolite, near Oxford. 
 
 (39.) De la Beche's Geological Eesearches, p. 344. 
 (40.) Lyell's Elements of Geology. 
 
 (41.) The tertiary mammalia are chiefly described from the 
 beautiful work of Professor Owen, A History of British Fossil 
 Mammalia and Birds, 1845. 
 
 (42.) Supplement to the Atomic Theory. 
 (43.) Carpenter on Life, Todd's Cyclopedia. 
 
 (44.) From the Prize Essay of Dr. Carpenter (1838), under the 
 award of the professors of the Edinburgh University. 
 
 (45.) Alison's Principles of Physiology, quoted in the above Prize 
 Essay. 
 
 (46.) Treatise on the Forces which produce the organization of 
 Plants. New York, 1844. 
 
 (47.) The absence of philosophic discrimination from the present 
 work has been illustrated by many critical references to this passage. 
 The simple fact is, that the reviewers have themselves failed in 
 discrimination ; not observing that it is the forms merely, not the 
 internal constitution, of living bodies, which I have suggested to be 
 a result of similar forces to those productive of the forms of crystals. 
 The idea, after all, did not originate here, but was adopted partly 
 from the following passage in Mr. Leithead's work on Electricity, 
 (1837) : 
 
 " the form of the route of free electricity is modified by 
 
 the medium through which it passes, and also by the electrical state 
 of such medium, or of that of the relative electrical conditions of 
 two bodies between which it is transmitted. If the medium through 
 which it passes possesses a very inferior conducting power, it is 
 obvious that a certain momentum must be requisite to enable the 
 fluid to force its passage to a given distance, and there will be a 
 point at which the momentum of the fluid and the resistance of the 
 body will exactly counterbalance each other ; but so soon as the 
 electricity has again accumulated to a sufficient degree to overcome 
 the resistance, it will again force its way in another direction, until 
 it arrives at another point of equilibrium. In this way we may 
 readily see the modus operandi of the electric fluid in imparting 
 regular forms to bodies ; and it is highly probable that its action in 
 this respect extends to the vegetable kingdom, and perhaps operates 
 
NOTES. 285 
 
 even on animals, from the time in irhich they exist in the embryo 
 state Another fact, in support of the opinion that the dis- 
 tinctive forms of bodies are produced by electrical action, is, that 
 crystals, and the twigs and leaves of vegetables, all terminate in 
 points or sharp edges, so that the electrical action can proceed no 
 further in increasing the growth, or, in other words, in propelling 
 fresh portions of matter for the extension of the plant, or the crystal, 
 beyond the pointed or edged termination." 
 
 (48.) Carpenter's Report on the Results obtained by the Micro- 
 scope in the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843. 
 
 (49.) See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation ; Jameson's 
 Journal, Oct., 1843. 
 
 (50.) The reader will please to understand that this is only a 
 humble attempt to bring illustrations from a department of science 
 on which at present much doubt and obscurity rest. I have followed 
 the best lights that could be found, but cannot be assured that 
 better will not yet be evolved from the researches of the many able 
 physiologists now engaged in the investigation of ultimate structure 
 and of embryology. I am bound to admit, in the meantime, that the 
 identity of the globules produced in albumen by electricity with living 
 cells, and the fact of the reproduction of living globules, are both 
 doubted by physiologists of high character. In this, as in other 
 instances, particular illustrations may be held in doubt, or may 
 altogether fail, without necessary injury to other arguments. 
 
 (51.) Article Generation, in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and 
 Physiology. 
 
 (52.) Article Zoophytes, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th edition. 
 A more general, but more arresting argument in favour of primitive 
 production, though not conclusively so, has been presented in the 
 following terms : 
 
 " We see a simple germ the nucleus of a cell develop itself 
 into a feeling, moving, thinking man, by drawing into itself, and 
 combining into new forms, the particles of what we are accustomed 
 to call inorganic matter. These new forms are caused, by the very 
 act of combination, to manifest properties of a new and peculiar 
 kind ; and their actions constitute the life of the being. Hence we 
 must attribute to all those substances, which are thus drawn from the 
 inorganic into the organic mode of existence, a latent capacity for 
 the latter; just as we say that the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and 
 nitrogen, which make up the organic substance termed muscular 
 fibre, and which, in that state or mode of combination, possess 
 certain vital properties, possess also a latent capacity for combining 
 in that mode of aggregation termed crystaline, and for exhibiting the 
 solubility, translucency, and other qualities of a salt (all of which 
 
286 NOTES. 
 
 are totally opposed to its vital properties, and cannot co-exist with 
 them), when united into the form of cyanate of ammonia. If we 
 were only acquainted with those elements as they exist in organic 
 compounds, their transposition into a crystaline salt would be almost 
 as marvellous to us as the opposite change is now. If this latent 
 organizability or vitality be admitted (as we conceive logical proof 
 to have been given that it must) as a property of a large proportion 
 of what we call inorganic matter, is there any such wonderful diffi- 
 culty in imagining that it may be brought into play in some other 
 manner than by the agency of a pre-existing germ ? We think not. 
 But let further investigation and more extended experience decide." 
 British and Foreign Medical Review, January, 1845. 
 
 (53.) See a pamphlet circulated by Mr. Weekes in 1842. For a 
 detail of further and more conclusive experiments, reference may be 
 made to Explanations, forming a Sequel to Vestiges, &c. 
 
 (54.) The writer of the critique upon this work in the British 
 and Foreign Medical Review, after saying that " none of the easy 
 solutions which have been offered of the difficult problem presented 
 by the appearance of this acarus, can be admitted," proceeds to make 
 a few remarks much to the above purpose ; and adds " Not the 
 least curious part of its (the acarus's) history is the series of 
 metamorphoses which it undergoes before quitting the solution ; 
 these being entirely different from the very slight changes which 
 other acari undergo after their emersion from the egg. Further, we 
 believe it may be positively asserted, that, in whatever mode these 
 acari are first generated, it is not from eggs ; since, after they have 
 escaped from the solution, they live in the neighbourhood, and 
 readily breed ; and their eggs, which we have ourselves seen, are 
 quite large enough to have been readily visible in the solution, had 
 they existed there." 
 
 The metamorphoses here adverted to will perhaps go some way to 
 satisfy those who have objected that the acarus, belonging, as it 
 does, to the articulata, is too high an animal to have been produced 
 otherwise than from ova. 
 
 I would, nevertheless, remark that the Acarus Crossii is only 
 brought forward as one illustration, and in order that a hypothesis 
 which I think has strong probabilities on its side may have the 
 benefit of any doubts that can be instituted with regard to the pro- 
 duction of this creature. The decision of the question against the 
 conclusion here leant to, would still leave much sound illustration, 
 and not in the least affect the general argument. 
 
 (55.) The objections made to the idea of a parity between ad- 
 vancing organization and the succession of fossils are all in regard 
 to subordinate points, and either rest on assumptions as to the 
 grades of animals which are entirely without solid foundation, or take 
 hold for a feeble support of certain blanks and imperfections in the 
 geological record. 
 
NOTES. 287 
 
 One of these objections relates to the occurrence of cephalopodous 
 mollusca, which, generally speaking, are the most highly organized 
 class of invertebrates, at the first or lowest point in the rock series 
 where distinct fossils are found. The answer is (1.) that, in a 
 right view of the genealogies of the animal kingdom, the only 
 predecessors of the cephalopoda possessing hard parts are certain 
 pteropodous families, whose shells are almost too slight to have had 
 a chance of being preserved; (2.) there is a lower aqueous forma- 
 tion which may have contained remains of lower families of animals, 
 but which has been acknowledged!)- so affected by the agency of 
 heat, that any fossils which it ever bore must have been obliterated ; 
 (3.) the first cephalopoda are of low families in their class, and 
 higher genera come afterwards. See, on these points, the section on 
 the Silurian Era, and that regarding the Affinities and Geographical 
 Distribution of Animals. 
 
 The second great objection rests upon certain peculiarities of the 
 cartilaginous order of fishes, those to which the earliest of the class 
 belonged. While existing specimens of the Cartilagines reach lower 
 down in the scale of organization than the osseous fishes, and while 
 their imperfect vertebral structure, heterocercal tails, and other pecu- 
 liarities, indicate a general inferiority, some of them present characters 
 in the nervous and reproductive systems, which the osseous fishes 
 do not possess. A few are viviparous, and manifest an affection for 
 their offspring. On these partial grounds, an assumption has been 
 built that the fishes commence with the highest forms ! The occur- 
 rence of cestraceons in the Upper Silurians is particularly insisted 
 upon as evidence for this conclusion. In reality, the few traits of 
 superiority in the cartilaginous order, even if general to it, which 
 they are not, are light in the scale, against the truly general infe- 
 riority. It is well known that no family of the animal kingdom is 
 equally high in all points of structure and endowment, and that 
 many forms, generally humble, have characteristics of a compara- 
 tively elevated kind. There are features of even the human organiza- 
 tion which would place our race below some of the inferior animals, 
 if these were to be made an exclusive criterion. The partial supe- 
 riority possessed by certain cartilaginous genera seems partly to 
 relate to their place in creation as destructives : they have a well- 
 developed nervous system to enable them to conquer their prey (see 
 Explanations, pp. 49 56). That the nervous system determines 
 the character of the reproductive system is an admitted law in 
 physiology (see Owen, Philosophical Transactions, 1834, p. 359). 
 To find, then, some of these cartilagines exhibiting a generative 
 system superior to other fishes, is no true difficulty in our course. 
 On the very same ground, the star fishes (radiata), where the sexes 
 are in different individuals, are superior to the annelides (articulata), 
 which present " an androgynous combination of simple ovaria and 
 testes ;" yet no one would think of describing the radiata generally 
 as superior to the articulata. Or the polypes might be said to be 
 superior to the star-fishes, because in some of them " the digestive 
 
288 NOTES. 
 
 canal presents an oesophagus, a gizzard, a glandular stomach, and 
 an intestine," while the latter animals have only " a radiated sac with 
 one aperture." Yet, does any one, for that reason, think of placing 
 the polypes above the star-fishes ? It cannot be pretended that these 
 and many similar facts are not well known, for they are in every 
 tolerable manual of physiology. Yet, in direct contradiction of 
 them, the opponents of the theory of development persist in assert- 
 ing that the first fishes in the geological record are the highest in 
 the book of the zoologist ! 
 
 For further explanations on this point, the reader is referred to 
 the chapter entitled The Affinities and Geographical Distribution of 
 Organisms. 
 
 The early occurrence of fishes, with a peculiarity of structure 
 allying them to the reptilian class, while fishes possessing no rep- 
 tilian affinities come into existence, in large numbers, long after- 
 wards, is sometimes brought forward as one of the proofs that the 
 fish class commenced with its highest forms. In strict fact, the 
 Sauroids are not the first fish: they were preceded in the Upper 
 Silurian formation by Placoids, and in the chart of M. Agassiz 
 (copied in Jameson's Journal, Oct. 1844), they come after another 
 large family of their own order, the Lepidoids. With regard to the 
 subsequent rise of non-reptilian fishes, the reader will see some 
 suggestions in the chapters on The Affinities and Geographical 
 Distribution of Organisms. 
 
 An objection of more recent occurrence arises from certain 
 reptilian remains found in strata, supposed to be of the New Red 
 Sandstone, in South Africa. One portion of these remains indicates 
 an animal more huge than the crocodile. Another goes to form a 
 new lacertian genus, combining characters of the lizard, crocodile, 
 and tortoise, and to which Mr. Owen has given the name ofDicynodon, 
 on account of two canine tusks which projected downwards with an 
 outward curve from the upper jaw of the animal, the rest of the 
 mouth being horny and toothless. These tusks, both as to their form 
 and internal structure, are regarded as of mammalian character. 
 
 Here, too, it is said by the opponents of the development theory, 
 we find traits of superior organization in the earliest animals of a 
 particular class. 
 
 That these Bidentals, as Mr. Owen more comprehensively calls 
 them, are amongst the earliest reptiles, is by no means ascertained ; 
 for the situation of the strata, in which they have been found, is 
 unfixed. But, admitting that they were of early occurrence among 
 reptiles, their exhibiting an approximation to mammalian dentition 
 cannot truly be regarded as a proof of their being high in their 
 class. We know well that a superior development of one organ, 
 more especially an external one, tells nothing to that effect. The 
 echinus, a member of the echinodermata, is furnished with teeth, 
 while, in the superior family of holothuria, they are reduced to rudi- 
 ments. Miiller detected in tbe scorpion most of the parts which 
 enter into the eye of the vertebrated animal, as well as a similarity 
 
NOTES. 289 
 
 in their arrangement, and yet we know how far inferior the scorpion 
 is, on general grounds, to the vertebrate sub-kingdom. The fact is, 
 that animals are endowed with such partial superiorities, when 
 necessary with regard to the circumstances in which they are 
 destined to live ; but their place in the animal scale is to be deter- 
 mined on totally different considerations. How, if it were otherwise, 
 should we find teeth in certain radiata. and wanting in the great 
 bulk of the mollusca and articulata? How should we find this 
 branch of organization, which prevails generally in the reptiles, 
 become extinguished in the superior class of the birds, and even in 
 some of the mammalia (the manatus stelleri, for example) ? 
 
 In plain truth, the seizing upon this fact of bidental reptiles as 
 a proof against the development theory, and that before even the 
 place of the strata in which they were found was determined, is 
 only an evidence of the rashness of the counter-theorists on this 
 question, and of the weakness of the arguments by which their 
 opposition is maintained. 
 
 (56.) Lord's Popular Physiology. 
 
 (57.) The numhers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, &c., are formed by 
 adding the successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus : 
 
 1=1 
 1-1-2=3 
 
 1+24-3=6 
 l.|_24-3-j-4=10, &c. 
 
 They are called triangular numbers, because a number of points cor- 
 responding to any term can always be placed in the form of a 
 triangle ; for instance : 
 
 13 6 10 
 
 (58.) Modified from one in Carpenter's General Physiology. 
 (59.) Ktrby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology. 
 
 (60.) M. Hampe has observed in the creeping willow (salix repens) 
 that twigs above the water blossom as females, whilst those twigs 
 which have been in the water, and subsequently blossomed when the 
 water dried up, had only male blossoms. This seems a case analo- 
 gous to that of the determination of sex by the bees, and may be 
 held as an additional proof of the power of circumstances to affect 
 development to very important results. 
 
 (61.) Gardeners' Chronicle, July 11, 1846 (Review of Vestiges 
 of Creation}. 
 
 u 
 
290 NOTES. 
 
 (62 ) The Vegetable Kingdom, 8vo, 1846, p. 5. 
 
 (63.) Darwin's Journal of a Voyage round the World. 
 
 (64.) Lamarck's Philosophic Zoologique. 
 
 (65.) Gardeners' Chronicle, 1846, p. 118. The witness in this 
 case signs himself, C. Wayth, Bearsted House, Maidstone. See 
 p. 102 of the same volume ; also the Gardeners' Chronicle for August 
 and September, 1844, where an experiment by Lord Arthur Hervey 
 is recorded. See, further, the Magazine of Natural History, new 
 series, i. 574, and Reports of Ray Society, 1846, p. 381. 
 
 (66.) Steinstrupp on Alternate Generation, published by the Ray 
 Society. 
 
 (67.) Yarrell's Birds, iii. 571. 
 
 (68.) Magazine of Natural History, vii. 57. 
 
 (69.) A correspondent states that he has seen a variety of the 
 goldfinch marked by strong distinguishing characters, considerably 
 larger size, more graceful form, and much richer and more lustrous 
 plumage, which, bird-catchers say, occurs frequently as a progeny 
 of the ordinary bird. The distinctions of this animal are greater 
 than those held in many instances as specific ; there seems no room 
 to doubt in such an instance that pairs so peculiar might, in fresh 
 ground of their own, give rise to a race which naturalists would call 
 a separate species. 
 
 (70.) See letter of the Dean of Manchester in Gardeners' Chro- 
 nicle, July 18, 1846. 
 
 (71.) Lectures on the Invertebrate Animals, p. 369. 
 
 (72.) See this series of forms illustrated in Professor E. Forbes's 
 beautiful volume on the Echiuodermata. 
 
 (73.) See the presumed steps of conversion fully described in 
 Professor Rymer Jones's Animal Kingdom, p. 224. 
 
 (74.) Professor Edward Forbes, in Jameson's Journal, xxxvi. 326. 
 (75.) Carpenter's General Physiology. 
 (76.) See p. 33 of this volume. 
 (77.) Griffith's Cuvier, ix. 42. 
 
NOTES. 291 
 
 (78.) Report on the Progress and Present State of Ornithology, 
 by H. E. Strickland ; British Association, 1844. 
 
 (79.) A different position was assigned to the herbivorous cetes 
 in the fifth edition. Since then, the balance of evidence appears to 
 me decidedly for the arrangement above indicated. 
 
 (80.) The sloths have been raised from association with the ant- 
 eaters and armadillos to the Primates, by a French naturalist, in 
 consideration of the complete nature of the fore-arm, the head of the 
 radius being round and apt for rotation ; also, from the thorax being 
 rather wide than deep, and from the form of the trunk in its lower 
 part. Mr. Owen is opposed to the translation ; bnt it is supported by 
 Mr. Edward Newman, a living zoologist of good reputation. The 
 following are Mr. Newman's reasons : 
 
 " The face of the sloth is round, short, and remarkable for its 
 almost human expression, a character even more observable in this 
 animal than in the majority of monkeys. The structure of the skull 
 and teeth also exhibits some approaches to the monkeys, but none to 
 the ant-eaters. The size, figure, and general external appearance is 
 that of a monkey. The mammae are two only, and these are pectoral. 
 The feet are always used as hands for grasping and climbing, and 
 never as feet for walking or running on the ground. The sloth 
 spends his time entirely in trees, among the branches of which he 
 travels with wonderful rapidity." System of Nature, 184A 
 
 (81.) It was suggested that the megatherium might exhibit an 
 alliance to the armadillos by a bony armour. Mr. Newman (System 
 of Nature) expresses his dissent to this notion, because "the dorsal 
 vertebrae want those lateral processes so essential to the support of 
 a weighty osseous carapace. I should rather fancy him a sloth in all 
 his characters, with a round monkey-like face, an awkward gait, 
 shaggy hair, pectoral mammae, &c. Megalonyx, Milodon, and (if 
 distinct) Dr. Harlan's Oryctotherium Missouriense, evidently approach 
 Megatherium, and unite in forming a group of animals, &c." 
 
 (82.) Newman's System of Nature. 
 
 (83.) British Fossil Mammalia and Birds, p. 69. 
 
 (84.) See this argument more fully elucidated in Explanations, a 
 Sequel to tte Vestiges, &c. 
 
 (85.) See Pritchard's Researches into the Physical History of 
 Man. 
 
 (86.) Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs. 
 
292 NOTES. 
 
 (87.) Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion between Science and 
 Kevealed Keligion, i. 44. 
 
 (88.) Schoolcraft. 
 
 (89.) Views of the Cordilleras. 
 
 (90.) The view of civilization here controverted is to be found in 
 Archbishop Whateley's Lectures on Political Economy. In Additions 
 to the fifth edition of his Grace's Elements of Rhetoric, the argu- 
 ment from the Mandans is impugned, on the grounds that there is 
 no proof of their originally having been savages, or of the same race 
 with the other North Americans, or of their civilization not having 
 been introduced from without. Mr. Catlin is also represented as 
 stating in private that he presumed the Mandans, from their external 
 appearance, to be a distinct race. Their distinctness and the inde- 
 pendent origin of the civilization I am represented as having assumed, 
 contrary to all logical science. I would reply briefly, that censure 
 on the last point, were it just, would come ill from one who is willing 
 wholly to assume, in this case, the opposite position. It is not just, 
 however, for were the Mandans, as his Grace supposes, the remains 
 of a civilized people introduced from without, they ought to have had 
 a distinct language, which is not pretended. External peculiarities 
 are precisely those which civilization modifies, and they therefore 
 tell not in the case. Then as to Mr. Catlin's privately expressed 
 admission, it is sufficient to refer to his own words, quoted at a later 
 portion of my text, where he expressly attributes the improvement of 
 the Mandans to the external circumstances to which I in part trace 
 all civilization. Unprompted, unprejudiced, untampered with testi- 
 mony, such as we find in Mr. Catlin's book, seems to me worth con- 
 siderably more than anything on the opposite side of a merely 
 theoretical nature. 
 
 (91.) The problem of Chinese civilization, such as it is so puz 
 zling when we consider that they are only, as will be presently seen, 
 the child race of mankind is solved when we look to geographical 
 position producing fixity of residence and density of population. 
 
 (92.) Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M. 
 Serres. 
 
 (93.) Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute 
 of maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the 
 Americans and Negroes. 
 
 (94.) Missionary Scenes and Labours in Southern Africa. 
 
 (95.) " Is not God the first cause of matter as well as of mind ? 
 Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom 
 
NOTES. 293 
 
 of God of its first author as those of mind ? Has not even mat- 
 ter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in con- 
 sequence of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, cer- 
 tain consciousnesses called sensations of the same ? Is not, there- 
 fore, the wonder of matter also receiving the consciousnesses of other 
 matter called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in 
 analogy with all former wonders, than would be, on the contrary, the 
 wonder of this faculty of the mind not flowing out of any faculties of 
 matter? Is it not a wonder which, so far from destroying our hopes 
 of immortality, can establish that doctrine on a train of inferences 
 and inductions more firmly established and more connected with each 
 other than the former belief can be, as soon as we have proved that 
 matter is not perishable, but is only liable to successive combinations 
 and decombinations ? 
 
 " Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matter 
 than we can look forward the other way iuto the last developments of 
 mind ? Can we say that God has not in matter itself laid the seeds 
 of every faculty of mind, rather than that he has made the first 
 principle of mind entirely distinct from that of matter? Cannot 
 the first cause of all we see and know have fraught matter itself, 
 from its very be y inn in </, irith all the attributes necessary to develop 
 into mind as well as he can have from the first made the attributes 
 of mind wholly different from those of matter, only in order after- 
 wards, by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link, to join the 
 two together? 
 
 " * * [The decombiuation of the matter on which mind rests] 
 is this a reason why mind must be annihilated ? Is the temporary 
 reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of which that mind de- 
 velops, to their original component elements, a reason for thinking 
 that they cannot again at another later period and in another higher 
 globe, be again recombined, and with more splendour than before '.' 
 * * The New Testament does not, after death here, promise us a 
 soul hereafter unconnected with matter, and which has no connexion 
 with our present mind a soul independent of time and space. That 
 is a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their 
 just and real meaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like 
 the present, founded on time and space ; since it is, like the present, 
 to hold a certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space ; 
 but it promises a mind situated in portions of time and of space dif- 
 ferent from the present : a mind composed of elements of matter more 
 extended, more perfect, and more glorious : a mind which, formed of 
 materials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to see 
 farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any 
 mind here existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven 
 combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from the 
 changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well as 
 matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes for 
 the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue to 
 experience : a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the total 
 
294 NOTES. 
 
 decomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforth 
 continue last and immortal." HOPE, on the Origin and Prospects of 
 Man, 3831. 
 
 (96.) Dublin Keview, Aug. 1840. 
 
 (97.) Including rotifera, entozoa, echinodermata, &c. 
 
 (98.) The ray, which is considered as low in the scale of fishes, 
 gives the first faint representation of a brain in certain scanty and 
 medullary masses, which appear as merely composed of enlarged ori- 
 gins of the nerves. 
 
 (99.) If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of 
 thought that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and 
 will may be presumed to have been brought to an exact measure- 
 ment. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000 
 miles per second, and the experiments of Professor Wheatstone have 
 shown that the electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same 
 rate, thus showing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of 
 all the " imponderable bodies." Mental action may accordingly be 
 presumed to have a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two 
 thousand miles in the second a rate evidently far beyond what is 
 necessary to make the design and execution of any of our ordinary 
 muscular movements apparently identical in point of time, which they 
 
 (100.) Phrenological Journal, xv. 338. 
 
 (101.) The doctrine of the natural laws as affecting human welfare 
 is clearly and satisfactorily explained in Mr. Combe's Essay on the 
 Constitution of Man, to which and to the excellent works of Dr. 
 Andrew Combe, may be ascribed no small share of that public move- 
 ment towards improved sanitary regulations which is one of the most 
 gratifying features of our age. 
 
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