374 Miscellaneous. 



am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those 

 belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants 

 of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as 

 the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of 

 that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection 

 has been the main, but not exclusive, means of modification." 



This is the kernel of the new theory — the Darwinian creed, as 

 recited at the close of the introduction to the remarkable book under 

 consideration. The questions "What will he do with it?" and 

 "How far will he carry it?" the author answers at the close of the 

 volume : " I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modifica- 

 tion embraces all the members of the same class." Furthermore, 

 " I believe that all animals have descended from at most only four 

 or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number." 

 Seeing that analogy as strongly suggests a further step in the same 

 direction, while he protests that " analogy may be a deceitful guide," 

 yet he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that "probably 

 all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have de- 

 scended from some one primordial form, into which life was first 

 breathed*." 



In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a 

 little way ; in the last, the wedge is driven home. 



We have already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such 

 a theory of derivation of species — reasons which give it plausibility, 

 and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to 

 changes occurring since the last tertiary period. We are well pleased 

 at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in 

 this respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial 

 judgment of Pictet, the Swiss palaeontologist. In his review of 

 Darwin's book f — much the fairest and most admirable opposing one 

 that has yet appeared — he freely accepts that ensemble of natural 

 operations which Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name 

 of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout the first 

 chapters seems " a la fois prudent etfort" and is disposed to accept 

 the whole argument in its foundations, — that is, so far as it relates 

 to what is now going on, or has taken place inthe present geological 

 period, which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to 

 the borders of the tertiary £. Pictet accordingly admits that the 



* Page 484, Engl. ed. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, 

 pp.431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are 

 referred to, and the remark is appended — " But this inference is chiefly 

 grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. 

 The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata 

 or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, &c, 

 some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial 

 parent." 



f In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, Mars 1860. 



j This we learn from his very interesting article * De la Question de 

 l'Homme Fossile,' in the same (March) number of the Bibliotheque 

 Universelle. 



