288 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



" That organic species are the result of still operating powers and 

 influences is probable from the great paleontological fact of the succes- 

 sion of such so-called species from their first appearance in the oldest 

 fossiliferous strata ; it is more probable from the kind and degree of 

 similitude between the species that succeeds and the species that disap- 

 pears never to return as such ; the similitude being in the main of a 

 nature caressed by the terms of ' progressive departure from a gener- 

 al to a special type.' Creation by law is suggested by the many in- 

 stances of retention of structures in Paleozoic species, which are em- 

 bryonal and transitory in later species of the same order or class ; and 

 the suggestion acquires force by considering the analogies which the 

 transitory embryonal stages in the higher species bear to the mature 

 forms of the lower species. Every new instance of structures which 

 does not obviously and without straining, receive a teleological expla- 

 nation, especially the great series of anatomical facts expressed by the 

 ' law of vegetative or irrelative repetition,' all congenital varieties, 

 deformities, monstrosities opposes itself to the hypothesis of the origin 

 of species by a primary or immediate and never repeated act of adapt- 

 ive construction." 



If we correctly understand Prof. Owen's views, as expressed in the 

 above paragraphs, he inclines to, in fact adopts, though cautiously, the 

 hypothesis of the origin of species by "transmutation" or " deviation;" 

 these transmutations being in no accordance with a pre-arranged plan, 

 but carried out under the influence of second causes. The first organ- 

 isms were unicellular, brought into existence by spontaneous genera- 

 tion " under law," and, by a slow and orderly transmutation, ascensive- 

 ly differentiated into the highest vegetable and animal organisms. For 

 the precise mode of bringing about the individual changes, he offers no 

 conjecture, whatever. 



We leave it for the advocates of progressive creation to answer these 

 views, and will conclude with expressing the belief, that there is no 

 just ground for taking, and that we arrive at no reasonable theory 

 which takes, a position intermediate between the two extremes. We 

 must either assume, on the one hand, that living organisms commenced 

 their existence fully formed, and by processes not in accordance with 

 the usual order of nature, as it is revealed to human minds, or, on the 

 other hand, that each species become such by progressive development 

 or transmutation ; that, as in the individual so in the aggregate of races, 

 the simple forms were not only the precursors, but the progenitors of 

 the complex ones, and that thus the order of Nature, as commonly man- 

 ifest in her works, was maintained. 



AGASSfe ON THE TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 



Prof. Agassiz, in the preface to his recently published work, " Meth- 

 ods of Study in Natural History" takes occasion thus to define his 

 views in regard to the hypothesis of the origin of species by transmuta- 

 tion. "I wish to enter my earnest protest against the transmutation 

 theory, revived of late with so much ability, and so generally received. 

 It is my belief that naturalists are chasing a phantom, in their search 

 after some material gradation among created beings, by which the 

 whole Animal Kingdom may have been derived by successive develop- 

 ment from a single germ, or from a few germs. It would seem, from 



