xliv PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. 



Professor SedgivicJc's Preface, fyc. 



The hostility of this gentleman to the present work was first 

 shown in a long article in the Edinburgh Review (July 1845), 

 written in a passionate tone, and adducing many facts and reason- 

 ings which the learned professor evidently expected to have an over- 

 whelming effect. The author was nevertheless able to enter defences 

 in a volume entitled Explanations, &c., which met with a favourable 

 reception from the public. His main work, moreover, has evidently 

 not been quite crushed by the blow of the professor, for it has since 

 then passed through many editions, and still maintains its original 

 popularity. Feeling apparently that the article in the Review had 

 not accomplished the desired end, Mr. Sedgwick has done our work 

 the honour of writing between three and four hundred additional 

 pages against it, and these he has presented as a set of incrustations 

 upon a reprint of his small treatise, A Discourse on the Studies of 

 the University of Cambridge, which now therefore appears much 

 like a simple mollusk bearing thrice its own weight in balarii, serpulse, 

 and other inferior organisms. We must spare the reader the tedium 

 of discussing such of these annotations as refer to particular points 

 in science, as the nebular hypothesis, the grade of the cartilaginous 

 fishes, and other matters in palaeontology, content to believe that 

 enough has been done in the Proofs, &c., to support our own views 

 against those of the Wooclwardian professor. It will be sufficient 

 here to meet Mr. Sedgwick on a few of his leading arguments. 



The learned professor asks if we have any proof of specific trans- 

 mutations in the living world, and answers by saying that "we have 

 not the shadow of any proof of them." He admits " there are 

 varieties the limits of species are not well known .... as an in- 

 evitable consequence, naturalists have made many blunders .... 

 but the mistakes of naturalists alter not the laws of nature. .... 

 Not so much as one true specific change has ever been brought about, 

 so as to raise the progeny of any known animal to a higher grade in 

 the organic scale." (p. xxv.) 



It would be obliging if Mr. Sedgwick would explain how, if the 

 limits of species are not well known, he comes to be so sure that there 

 is no such thing as specific transmutations. He looks to naturalists 

 for the data on which he makes this so confident affirmation : if 

 naturalists are so liable to make mistakes about species, how can he 

 justify such confidence? And how is he so well aware of the laws 

 of nature, and how can he so well define their operations, indepen- 

 dently of those blundering naturalists.? If he cannot answer these 

 questions satisfactoril} r , I must take leave to consider him as very 

 far from being entitled to find fault with the reasoning of the work 

 in dispute, or to pronounce in any manner upon the subject. 



No specific transformations 1 It may be that there are certain 

 forms and grades which are not seen to be over-passed in the living 

 world. It has never been alleged by the author of the Vestiges, as 



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