308 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [xiil 



simplest to the highest, could not now exist; in such a case the 

 simpler organisms must have disappeared." 



To this Professor Kolliker replies, with perfect justice, 

 that the conclusion drawn by Pelzeln does not really 

 follow from Darwin's premises, and that, if we take the 

 facts of Palaeontology as they stand, they rather support 

 than oppose Darwin's theory. 



" 6. Great "weight must he attached to the ohjection "brought forward 

 by Huxley, otherwise a warm supporter of Darwin's hypothesis, that 

 we know of no varieties which are sterile with one another, as is the 

 rule among sharply distinguished, animal forms. 



" If Darwin is right, it must be demonstrated that forms may he 

 produced by selection, which, like the present sharply distinguished 

 animal forms, are infertile when coupled with one another, and this 

 has not been done." 



The weight of this objection is obvious ; but our 

 ignorance of the conditions of fertility and sterility, 

 the want of carefully conducted experiments extending 

 over long series of years, and the strange anomalies 

 presented by the results of the cross-fertilization of 

 many plants, should all, as Mr. Darwin has urged, be 

 taken into account in considering it. 



The seventh objection is that Ave have already dis- 

 cussed {supra, p. 329). 



The eighth and last stands as follows : — 



" 8. The developmental theory of Darwin is not needed to enable us 

 to understand the regular harmonious progress of the complete series 

 of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect. 



"The existence of general laws of Nature explains this harmony, 

 even if we assume that all beings have arisen separately and inde- 

 pendent of one another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in 

 which there can be no thought of a genetic connexion of forms, 

 exhibits the same regular plan, the same harmony, as the organic 

 world ; and that, to cite only one example, there is as much a natural 

 system of minerals as of plants and animals." 



We do not feel quite sure that we seize Professor 

 Kolliker s meaning here, but he appears to suggest that 



