VIEWS OF AGASSIZ ON EVOLUTION. 371 



marked parallelism with the lower degrees of 

 certain types of the class as it now exists on 

 the surface of the earth." 



It has been said by one of the biographers 

 of Agassiz, 1 in reference to this work upon the 

 fishes of the Old Red Sandstone : " It is dif- 

 ficult to understand why the results of these 

 admirable researches, and of later ones made 

 by him, did not in themselves lead him to sup- 

 port the theory of transformation, of which 

 they seem the natural consequence." It is 

 true that except for the frequent allusion to a 

 creative thought or plan, this introduction to 

 the Fishes of the Old Red might seem to be 

 written by an advocate of the development 

 theory rather than by its most determined 

 opponent, so much does it deal with laws of 

 the organic world, now used in support of 

 evolution. These comprehensive laws, an- 

 nounced by Agassiz in his " Poissons Fos- 

 siles," and afterward constantly reiterated by 

 him, have indeed been adopted by the writers 

 on evolution, though with a wholly different 

 interpretation. No one saw more clearly than 

 Agassiz the relation which he first pointed 

 out, between the succession of animals of the 

 same type in time and the phases of their em- 



1 Louis Agassiz : Notice biographique, par Ernest Favre. 



