1859.] on Recent and Fossil Mammalia. 115 



jecture, where to try to advance is to find ourselves " in wandering 

 mazes lost." 



With much more satisfaction do I return to the legitimate deduc- 

 tions from the phenomena we have had under review. 



In the survey which I have taken in the present course of lectures 

 of the genesis, succession, geographical distribution, affinities, and 

 osteology of the mammalian class, if I have succeeded in demonstrat- 

 ing the perfect adaptation of each varying form to the exigencies, and 

 habits, and well-being of the species, I have fulfilled one object which 

 I had in view, viz., to set forth the beneficence and intelligence of 

 the Creative Power. 



If I have been able to demonstrate a uniform plan pervading the 

 osteological structure of so many diversified animated beings, I must 

 have enforced, were that necessary, as strong a conviction of the unity 

 of the Creative Cause. 



If, in all the striking changes of form and proportion which have 

 passed under review, we could discern only the results of minor 

 modifications of the same few osseous elements, — surely we must be 

 the more strikingly impressed with the wisdom and power of that 

 Cause which could produce so much variety, and at the same 

 time such perfect adaptations and endowments, out of means so 

 simple. 



For, in what have those mechanical instruments, — the hands of 

 the ape, the hoofs of the horse, the fins of the whale, the trowels of 

 the mole, the wings of the bat, — so variously formed to obey the 

 behests of volition in denizens of different elements — in what, I say, have 

 they differed from the artificial instruments which we ourselves plan with 

 foresight and calculation for analogous uses, save in their greater 

 complexity, in their perfection, and in the unity and simplicity of the 

 elements which are modified to constitute these several locomotive organs. 



Everywhere in organic nature we see the means not only sub- 

 servient to an end, but that end accomplished by the simplest means. 

 Hence we are compelled to regard the Great Cause of all, not like 

 certain philosophic ancients, as a uniform and quiescent mind, as an 

 all pervading anima mundi, but as an active and anticipating 

 intelligence. 



By applying the laws of comparative anatomy to the relics of 

 extinct races of animals contained in and characterizing the different 

 strata of the earth's crust, and corresponding with as many epochs in 

 the earth's history, we make an important step in advance of all pre- 

 ceding philosophies, and are able to demonstrate that the same per- 

 vading, active, and beneficent intelligence which manifests His power 

 in our times, has also manifested His power in times long anterior to 

 the records of our existence. 



But we likewise, by these investigations, gain a still more important 

 truth, viz., that the phenomena of the world do not succeed each other 

 with the mechanical sameness attributed to them in the cycles of the 

 epicurean philosophy ; for we are able to demonstrate that the different 

 epochs of the history of the earth were attended with corresponding 



