THE TRANSMUTATION THEORY. T5 



itive types. That work is quite recent ; I have not had it more 

 than a Avcek, but I have appropriated its contents as rapidly as I 

 could in order to sec what its merit is. I see that he is perfectly 

 conversant with the structure of animals and their relations to 

 one another, and he has taken his knowledge of the affinities of 

 animals — that is, the relation arising from similarity of structure 

 — as the test of their genealogical resemblance to one another. 

 Let me explain, lest this should be misunderstood. We know 

 two kinds of relations very well. We know what is paren- 

 tage — the relation derived from the genealogical connection « 

 of a succession of individuals — and genealogical trees give 

 us the order of succession of animals approaching very near 

 the primitive stock ; and genealogical trees are legitimate 

 subjects of historical investigation, and the more of them we 

 have that are accurate, the better for our precise knowledge 

 of our relationship to one another in that way. There is 

 another kind of relation which exists in the animal kingdom 

 and in the vegetable kingdom also ; it is a similarity determined 

 by a community of structural characteristics. For instance : all 

 the fishes are related to each other by the nature of their back- 

 bone, by the nature of their fins, by the nature of their scales ; 

 in fact, by all those structural peculiarities which make fishes to 

 be fishes, and so to belong to one class. So there is an affinity 

 between all birds. The duck, the heron, the sparrow, the parrot, 

 though so widely different from one another, and living in 

 different parts of the world, have an affinity to one another by 

 all those traits of structure which constitute the bird a bird — 

 that is, the representative of one class. Now, whence do these 

 traits of affinity come ? What is their cause ? It is a thing 

 which is a fact ; we have it before us ; and that fact is the 

 primary fact of our scientific research. We have not been able 

 to account for it ; we have no explanation for it, other than that 

 it is a fact founded in the creation or in the nature of these 

 things. Now the supporters of the transmutation theory tell 

 us : " We know better. We know whence affinity comes. It 

 is the result of a common parentage, of a common descent ; and 

 if the parrot and the heron and the goose have an affinity with 

 one another, it is because they are all descended from a common 

 bird-like ancestor, which was neither parrot, nor heron, nor 

 goose, but which was an animal capable of producing these 



