xxxvi PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



be on their guard against too readily believing that obnoxious gene- 

 ralizations are disproved. For our own part, we must claim for the 

 future the right to be somewhat slower than heretofore in accepting 

 facts which are hurried before the world, as subversive of the de- 

 velopment hypothesis. 



Not content with what he had done to prove the high rank of the 

 Asterolepis, Mr. Miller employs the three succeeding chapters in an 

 attempt to obtain a high place in the scale for the Placoid fishes. 

 He first employs much ingenuity and some amount of original ob- 

 servation in an attempt to establish that the rank of fishes should be 

 determined, not by the osseous, but by the nervous system. He next 

 brings forward some adroit argument against the principle, that 

 " what is a mark of immaturity in the young of one set of animals, 

 is a mark of inferior organization in the adult forms of another set." 

 An entire chapter is devoted to the explication of a principle of de- 

 gradation which appears in the succession of the animal types, the 

 footless serpent, for example, coming after the strong-limbed rep- 

 tiles, the inferior fishes also, according to his classification, coming 

 last. The conclusion he arrives at is, of course, that enibryotic 

 development affords no true key to the history of creation, for they 

 do not present similar phenomena. 



It is impossible to follow Mr. Miller through all the illustrations 

 by which he labours " to make the worse appear the better reason." 

 But it is not necessary. Let the reader be referred in the first 

 place to Proofs, Illustrations, fyc., No. 7, where he will find Professor 

 Agassiz affirming that the cartilaginous fishes are inferior to the 

 osseous. " These ancient fishes," he says, " were not so fully deve- 

 loped as most ofourjishes, being arrested, as it were, in their deve- 

 lopment." Can anything be plainer than this? In an article in 

 the Quarterly Review for September, 1851, designed to refute some 

 of the views ot' Sir Charles Lyell, the writer, supposed to be Professor 

 Owen, says, " In relation to the circumstances in which they lived, 

 paleozoic fishes were as perfect as their successors ; but in com- 

 parison with these successors, they were less fully developed." 

 Say that we have the sole authorit}" of Professor Agassiz for the low 

 position of the early fishes, the case surely becomes different from 

 what it would be if a nameless writer alone advanced the doctrine. 

 Is it, then, honest to overlook this authority ? or can the position 

 of the early fishes be changed at the dictation of either Mr. Miller 

 or Mr. Sedgwick, while such an authority remains undisposed of? 



As to the general fact of a harmony between individual develop- 

 ment and the development of animal life as manifested b}^ geology, 

 which Mr. Miller takes upon him to reject, it is affirmed as posi- 

 tively as words may speak by Professor Agassiz. The learned 

 naturalist refuses to see in this remarkable parity the history which 

 we have endeavoured to read off from it ; but as to the fact of the 

 parity itself he has no hesitation. It must be for Mr. Miller's 

 readers to say which authority they are willing to accept, Mr. Miller 

 or Professor Agassiz. 



