108 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING 



present is a natural system, we have an additional proof that 

 the past was a natural system also. So also it is admitted 

 that, however nearly the specific forms may experience an 

 entire change from one formation to another, there are always 

 resemblances and approximations between each two which are 

 adjacent to each other. " If," says M. Pictet, an opponent of 

 the views here advocated, " we compare two successive crea- 

 tions of one and the same epoch, such as the faunas of the five 

 divisions of the cretaceous formation, we cannot fail to be 

 struck with the intimate connexion they have luith each other. 

 The greater part of the genera are the same : a great part of 

 the species are very closely allied and easily confounded. 

 [Referring to two of these sub-formations,] is it probable that 

 the albian fauna had been completely annihilated, and then, 

 by a new and independent creation, replaced by a fauna alto- 

 gether new, and so similar to it ? I am aware that these facts 

 may be referred to the general plan of creation [that is, a sup- 

 posed plan, according to which the divine power had operated 

 in its special successive creative operations] ; but is the mind 

 entirely satisfied with this explanation ?" We may echo the 

 last question. Can we be content to assume for, after all, it 

 is assumption that a series of miraculous creations was inva- 

 riably to be in the manner of a piecing on and blending from one 

 to another, when we have the alternative of presuming (grant 

 it were to be left to presumption alone) that these connexions 

 are only memorials of a natural law presiding over the de- 

 velopment of the whole organic creation, and making it one 

 and not many things 1 We can only wonder that a man 

 learned in the subject can see such a difficulty as he has here 

 stated, and find it more easily passed over than the bare fact 

 that certain mammalia have not changed for three thousand 

 years, for such is the only difficulty he states on the other side. 1 

 It must further be recollected, that we are not only to 

 account for the origination of organic being upon this little 

 planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thou- 

 sands of series, the whole of which again form but one portion 



of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems 



* 



1 " If we assume that every species of animal and of plant was formed 

 by a distinct act of creative power, and if the species which have 

 incessantly succeeded one another were placed upon the globe by these 

 separate acts, then the existence of persistent types is simply an unin- 

 telligible irregularity." Professor Huxley, Macmillan's Magazine, 

 Dec. 1859. 



