148 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



time, in palaeontology, such a peculiarity as an extra-plication 

 in the enamel of a fossil pachiderm's tooth, is sufficient to 

 obtain a specific name for that animal, and constitute its origin 

 a separate miracle. With equal facility, naturalists of this 

 predominant order make up groups of species into genera, and 

 groups of genera into families and tribes. 



Suppose the doctrine were to be taken according to the 

 practice, we should possess a fact speaking strongly against 

 fixity of species. It has been pointed out by an eminent 

 botanist that, amongst the latest Fossil plants, are poplars, 

 pines, birches, and hornbeams, like those now existing, but not 

 the same. Thus one species has replaced another in even 

 comparatively recent times. It may be asked, if the same 

 change of species has not been going on since? The vague 

 descriptions of ancient botanists forbid our speaking confidently 

 of the intermediate ages. But look to the present time. In 

 districts examined narrowly at no distant day, new species are 

 continually being found by new investigators. It will be said 

 that these are owing to the acuteness of modern observers. 

 But this is begging the whole question. " We do not know," 

 says our author, " that we are entitled to assert, that botanists 

 were so mole-eyed thirty years ago, that their quick-sighted 

 successors have been able to add twenty-five per cent, to the 

 number of ascertained species growing at their own doors." 1 

 Grant, then, that the peculiar plants in question really are 

 species, the probability undoubtedly is, that they are newly 

 formed species, true examples of that very phenomenon which 

 the superstition of science would hold to be a supernatural 

 event. 



Still, take the doctrine according to the practice, and let us 

 see how it stands with regard to certain facts recently ascer- 

 tained. Amidst all the dogmatism which has been indulged 

 in on this subject, the assumed distinction of species has given 

 way in numberless instances, both in the vegetable and animal 

 kingdoms. In botany, the wider distinction of genus, and even 

 that of whole tribes, has proved in some cases fallacious. Ac- 

 cording to Dr. Lindley, " So entirely in the simplest forms of 

 Thallogens [an assemblage embracing sea-weeds, fungi, and 

 lichens] is all trace of series missing, that in some of them 

 their reproductive matter has been regarded by certain writers 

 as altogether of an ambiguous nature. In their opinion, it is 



1 Gardeners' Chronicle, July 11, 1846. 



