78 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



epoch has ever been noticed anywhere ; and the question 

 alluded to here is to be distinguished from that of the 

 origin of the differences in the bulk of species belonging 

 to two different geological eras. The question we are now 

 examining involves only the fixity or mutability of spe- 

 cies during one epoch, one era, one period, in the history 

 of our globe. And nothing furnishes the slightest argu- 

 ment in favour of their mutability. On the contrary, 

 every modern investigation 1 has gone only to confirm the 

 results first obtained by Cuvier, and his views, that species 

 are fixed. 



It is something to be able to show by monumental evi- 

 dence and by direct comparison, that animals and plants 

 have undergone no change for a period of about five thou- 

 sand years. 2 This result has had the greatest influence 

 upon the progress of science, especially with reference to 

 the consequences to be drawn from the occurrence in the 

 series of geological formations of organized beings as 

 highly diversified in each epoch as those of the present 

 day; 3 and it has laid the foundation for the conviction, 

 now universal among weU informed naturalists, that this 

 globe has been in existence for innumerable ages, and that 

 the length of time elapsed since it first became inhabited 

 cannot be counted in years. Even the length of the period 



We do not know how organized l KUNTH, Recherches snr les 



beings have originated, it is true ; plantes trouvees dans les tombeaux 



and no naturalist can be prepared to egyptiens ; Ann. des scien. nat., vol. 



account for their appearance in the viii, 1826, p. 411. 

 beginning, or for their difference in 2 It is not for me to discuss the 



different periods; butenoughisknown degree of reliability of the Egyptian 



to repudiate the assumption of their chronology; but, as far as it goes, it 



transmutation, as it does not explain shows that, from the oldest periods 



the facts, and shuts out further at- ascertained, animals have been what 



tempts at proper investigations. See they are now. 



BADEN POWELL'S Essays, quoted 3 See my paper upon The Primi- 



above, p. 412 et seq., and Essay 3rd, tive Diversity, etc., quoted above, 



generally. p. 35. 



