IINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 29 



conditions, changes of food, convulsions and transformations 

 of Nature and the destructive inroads of overpoweringly 



hostile forms of reptile, piscine or animal Life " 



(p. 4.), 



" Primal matter to zoophyte, to crustacean, to fish, to 

 saurian, to mammal and to Man! the inferior forms dis- 

 appearing when their allotted work was done and the 

 improved era no longer warranted their then inutile existence 

 just as the platysoraa of the Old Red Sandstone vanished in 

 the Magnesian Limestone ; or else becoming dwarfingly 

 modified previous to extinction : similarly to the diminution 

 of the seventy foot iguanodon into the four foot and perishing- 

 iguana which has outlived the age and environm.ent which 

 called its oiant ancestor into beino-. 



" In this ever recurring disappearance, or modification, of 

 animal and vegetable forms there is nothing strange. Every- 

 where about us we see waged the pitiless battle for life of 

 which it is the inevitable outcome. Just as the dandelion, 

 the plantain and the burdock extend their broad leaves o'er 

 the verdure of the meadow, starving and exhausting the 



grasses around them ; so there is a continual process 



of elimination and substitution going on in the great labora- 

 tories of Nature ; the useless perish, the useful live and 

 improve, although our conception of what is useful and im- 

 proving is often opposed to Nature's. 



" All Geology indicates assured progress by its pre- 

 sentation of higher and higher generations of exalting 

 forms, each remarkably suited to the peculiar age in which 

 it appeared at its best ■" (pp. 8-10.) 



iii. Recapitulation. 



" The wonderful progressive presentation of forms ascend- 

 ing from day to day in the scale of organized beings exhibited 

 by our species in the fostal state and remarked by the physi- 

 ologist, is another substantiation of my theory. 



" Man, in the womb, passes through all the embryo forms 

 of the types of the known divisions of animated Nature : first 

 but a germ, he then resembles mollusk, fish, reptile^ bird, 

 rodent, ruminant, and batrich *, finally assuming unmistake- 

 able features of the human animal. Thus we see a significant 

 panorama of the momentous changes which occurred in the 

 course of ages displayed in the short space of nine months in 

 the mysterious womb.^' (p. 8.) 



* Evidently a printer's error for " batracli " and referring- to a 

 fanciful resemblance of the foetal face to that of a froo-. 



