614 BRITISH FOSSIL REPTILES. 



When the question as to tlie power of predicating homologies both special and 

 genera], as in the case of the bones of the vertebrate skeleton,* became finally 

 accepted, the hypothesis of the successive incoming of specific forms or modifi- 

 cations of the vertebrate archetype through the operation of secondary causes was the 

 only one which could adapt itself intelligibly to the facts. In enunciating my conviction 

 that ' nomogeny,' i. e. natural laws, or secondary causes, had so operated " in the orderly 

 succession and progression of such organic phenomena," I laid myself open to comments 

 from opposite quarters. On the one hand, the admitted ignorance of the nature and 

 mode of operation of such secondary cause or causes led to the rebuke by a Successor 

 in the chair of the Hunterian Professorship, to wit, that, as to the secondary origin of 

 species, my ' trumpet gave an uncertain sound.' On the other hand, an able, theological 

 critic blew the following note of alarm : — "It is not German naturalists alone who are 

 contributing to diffuse scientific Pantheism. We have in England an anatomist, Richard 

 Owen. To call him an atheist because of his scientific conclusions would be an imper- 

 tinence ; nevertheless, in a lecture on ' The Nature of Limbs ' which was delivered at the 

 Royal Institution of Great Britain in February last, and has since been published, he 

 brings all his scientific knowledge and demonstrative skill in support of what is called 

 the Theory of Development, and which has become popularly known by its introduction 

 into the book called the ' Vestiges of Creation.' This theory of development, as our 

 readers may know, assumes that God did not interpose to create one class of creatures 

 after another as the consequence of each geological revolution ; but that, through the 

 long course of ages, one class of creatures was deveIoj}cd from another. Now, Richard 

 Owen midertakes to demonstrate scientificaUy (and his demonstration is very rigorous) 

 that the arms and legs of the human race are the later and higher developments of the 

 ruder wings and fins of the vertebrated animals— that is, those which have a true back- 

 bone ; and he shows in the splint bones of the foot of ahorse, bones analogous to those of 

 the fingers of the human hand. Therefore he concludes that God has not peopled the 

 globe by successive creations, but by the operation of general laws." t 



The sole ground for Professor Flower's depreciatory remark is my acknowledgment 

 of being " as yet ignorant "% of the nature or way of operation of such general or secondary 

 laws; and I regret to say that after all that has been advanced since 1849 in the 

 endeavoiu' to elucidate the Avay in Avhich one species may be transmuted into another, I 

 am still in need of lio;ht. 



Assuming that the ornithic modification of the vertebrate archetype was one of those 

 under which the ' vertebrate idea ' became embodied in the course of progression from 



* ' Hunterian Lectures,' Royal College of Surgeous, 1844; 'Reports of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science,' " On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton," 8vo, 1846;. 

 and ' Discourse on the Nature of Limbs,' 8vo, 1849. 



t ' Little Lectures ou Great Topics,' 12mo, 1849. 



X 'On the Nature of Limbs,' p. 80. 



