THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



No. 127. MAY 1847. 



XXXII. — Further Observations on the Formation of the Flints 

 of the Upper Chalk, with Remarks on the Sponge Theory of 

 Mr. Bowerbank. By J. Toulmin Smith, Esq. 



It is well remarked by Bacon*, that, '^if every intellect of every 

 age could assemble and labour in united and transmitted union, 

 but little progress could ever be made in science by the method 

 of anticipation" And in another placet he tells us what he 

 means by this ^^ anticipation^^ (which term he uses as the opposite 

 to " interpretation J,^' or true generalization), when he says, 

 " There are two ways of seeking truth. One jumps from a few 

 individual facts to general axioms, and makes use of such axioms 

 in all other individual and mediate cases ; and this is the way 

 hitherto in use. The other draws axioms from facts also ; but 

 it is by going gradually up from one to the other, by slow steps, 

 until at length the general axioms are reached ; and this is the 

 true though untrodden way.^' 



Sir J. W. Herschel says§, — "Whenever we perceive that two 

 or more phsenomena agree in so many or so remarkable points 

 as to lead us to regard them as forming a class or group, 

 if [there is much in this if^ — if we lay out of consideration, 

 or abstract, all the circumstances in which they disagree, and 

 retain in our minds those only in which they agree ; and then, 

 under this kind of mental convention, frame a definition or state- 

 ment of one of them in such words that it shall apply equally to 

 them all, such statement will appear in the form of a general pro- 

 position, having, in so far at least, the character of a laiv of 

 nature" A law of nature may perhaps be defined as being a 

 proposition announcing that a certain class of individuals agree- 

 ing in one character agree also in another. 



What is necessarily implied in the very term "law of nature," 

 and in the language of Bacon and Herschel ? Obviously that 

 there exists no single thing or fact in nature which is simply and 



* Nov. Org. Scien. lib. i. § 30 (ed. Lugd. Bat. 1645). 

 t Ibid. § 19. + Ibid. § 28. § Pveliminary Discourse, p. d^. 



Jnn.^ Mag, N, Hist. VoLxix. 21 



