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34 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



in time and space, and the limited duration of both species and indi- 

 vidual. But in this case ideas are compared which are altogether and 

 essentially distinct. The nature of this distinction is expressed among 

 the following propositions, in which an attempt is made to contrast 

 the respective relations of individual, species, and genus to geological 

 time and geographical space. A. The individual, whether we restrict 

 the word to the single organism, however produced or extend it to 

 the series of organisms, combined or independent, all being products 

 of a single ovum has but a limited and unique existence in time, 

 which, short as it must be, can be shortened by the influence of 

 unfavorable conditions, but which no combination of favoring circum- 

 stances can prolong beyond the term of life allotted to it according 

 to its kind. B. The species, whether we restrict the term to assem- 

 blages of individuals resembling each other in certain constant charac- 

 ters, or hold, in addition, the hypothesis, (warranted, as might be 

 shown from experience and experiment,) that between all the mem- 

 bers of such an assemblage there is in the relationship of family, the 

 relationship of descent, and consequently that they are all the 

 descendants of one first stock or protoplast (how that protoplast 

 appeared, is not part of the question) is like the individual in so 

 much as its relations to time are unique : once destroyed, it never 

 reappears. But, (and this is the point of the view now advocated,) 

 unlike the individual, it is continued indefinitely so long as conditions 

 favorable to its diffusion and prosperity that is to say, so long as 

 conditions favorable to the production and sustenance of the indi- 

 vidual representatives or elements are continued coincidently with its 

 existence. [No amount of favoring conditions can recall a species 

 once destroyed on this conclusion, founded upon all facts hitherto 

 observed in paleontology, the value of the application of natural 

 history to geological science mainly depends.] C. The genus, in 

 whatever degree of extension we use the term, so long as we apply it 

 to an assemblage of species intimately related to each other in com- 

 mon and important features of organization, appears distinctly to 

 exhibit the phenomenon of centralization in both time and space, 

 though with a difference, since it would seem that each genus has a 

 unique centre or area of development in time, but in geographical 

 space may present more centres than one. a. An individual is a 

 positive reality, b. A species is a relative reality, c. A genus is an 

 abstraction an idea but an idea impressed on nature, and not 

 arbitrarily dependant on man's conceptions. a. An individual is one. 

 |9. A species consists of many resulting from one. y. A genus con- 

 sists of more or fewer of these manies resulting from one linked 

 together not by a relationship of descent but by an affinity depend- 

 ent on a divine idea. And, lastly, a. An individual cannot manifest 

 itself in two places at once ; it has no extension in space ; its rela- 

 tions are entirely with time, but the possible duration of its existence 

 is regulated by the law of its inherent vitality, b. A species has cor- 

 respondent and exactly analogous relations with time and space, 

 the duration of its existence as well as its geographical extension is 



