common to North America and Europe. ATT 



analogue. This brings us to a result published by a practi- 

 cal zoologist, our associate, Professor Samuel George Mor- 

 ton, well known by his researches in anthropology. Finding 

 it impossible to account for the variations in the races of 

 men on the grounds usually brought forward, he contends 

 that although they constitute one species, the five races were 

 endowed with distinctive characters ab initio.* This view 

 places a neutral ground between such as contend for the 

 unity of the human species, and those of a contrary opinion ; 

 and is of such a nature that both parties may occupy it with- 

 out compromising the conclusions each has respectively adopt- 

 ed. Yet it is only satisfactory in the study of the human 

 species, of which we have records and monuments of great 

 antiquity, for it is not very likely that naturalists will be ready 

 to admit that certain shells are referable to a single species, 

 although endowed with distinctive characters at the period of 

 their creation. 



The hasty assertion has been sometimes made, that if trans- 

 mutation of species be possible, the study of natural history 

 becomes useless ; that is to say, a science is useless if its prin- 

 ciples militate against our view of that science, and Avena 

 sativa must not be studied by the botanist because it is assert- 

 ed to change into Secale cereale under peculiar circumstances.f 

 The lamarckian might with equal propriety insist that this 

 constitutes the chief inducement to study; that without it 

 every species would be isolated in creation ; that there would 

 be neither genus, order, nor family ; no relation between the 

 wings of a bird and the anterior limbs of a quadruped ; and 

 the seven cervical vertebrae, so constant in the mammalia, were 

 accident. He might consider his views as the foundation of 

 comparative anatomy, the key to the theories of representa- 

 tion and types, and the basis of the classification of organized 

 bodies. Nor could he perceive that the study of geoYo^y 

 would be affected by it to such a degree as to render the de- 

 ductions from organic remains less useful than under the sup- 



*See Swainson's Geogr. of Animals, (Cab. Cyc.) p. 2. 

 t See Charlesworth's Mag. Nat. Hist. i. 574 and ii. 670. 



