1 843-44.] FOSSIL FISHES OF THE OLD RED. 231 



The " Monograph of the Fossil Fishes of the 

 Old Red ' is more important for the embryologic 

 development, the zoological gradation, the geological 

 succession, and the geographical distribution in the 

 past and the present, than the " Origin of Species," 

 by Darwin. It has remained, and will continue to 

 remain, a landmark in zoological researches, because 

 nothing in it is left to supposition. Instead of being 

 a work of the imagination, a philosophical dissertation, 

 like the " Origin of Species," it is simply a record of 

 facts and very keen observations ; and in science, and 

 more especially in natural history, nothing is of value 

 except exact observations. Agassiz was not an op- 

 ponent of development ; on the contrary, he gave facts 

 in its favour, many years before Darwin did ; but he 

 was averse to drawing too hasty conclusions ; and 

 he leaned all the time " upon an intellectual coherence, 

 and not upon a material connection " ; and he thought 

 that variability seemed controlled by something more 

 than the mechanism of self-adjusting forces. In a 

 word, Agassiz, after his student life, was not a 

 materialist, but a spiritualist, in natural history, an 

 adversary, both of agnosticism and of pietism ; for he 

 says : " I dread quite as much the exaggeration of 

 religious fanaticism, borrowing fragments from science, 

 imperfectly, or not at all, understood, and then making 

 use of them to prescribe to scientific men what they 

 are allowed to see or to find in nature" (Louis Agassiz, 

 in a letter to Professor Adam Sedgwick, dated June, 



I845 1 )- 



1 " Louis Agassiz," by Mrs. E. C. Agassiz, Vol. I., p. 388. 



