AND ON THE RELATIONS OF ANIMALS. S 



never, for a moment, been questioned by his opponents, they 

 have all differed from him in the inferences to he drawn from 

 those facts. The foregoing list substantiates this assertion in 

 its letter and in its spirit. So that, if " discordance " among 

 those who profess to follow the same principles, is to be urged 

 as proof of the unsoundness of those principles, then the 

 system of M. Cuvier is the most objectionable that was ever 

 invented. 



2. But there seems to be another strong objection to the 

 circular theory, arising from its advocates being led to " most 

 unnatural deductions to fill up hiatus and gaps. The circular 

 theorists hesitating not to quote from extinct worlds ; when it 

 appears to have been an essential condition to those beings, 

 that, in the different eras which succeeded one another, with 

 the usual character of their family, they united the characters 

 of types, which made their appearance at more remote 

 periods." 



There appears to me much ambiguity and looseness in this 

 observation. The writer speaks of extinct animals, which, 

 nevertheless, have " the usual character of their family ;" mean- 

 ing, as I presume, their recent family. If so, the objection 

 amounts to this, — because some of the types or forms of a 

 recent family are found only in a fossil state, therefore we are 

 to take no notice of them in our survey of existing races : we 

 should have, in short, two systems of circles, one for the recent 

 types, and another for the fossil types, of tJie same family ! 

 This I presume to be the writer's meaning, — however absurd it 

 may appear, — because he goes on to say that, " with the usual 

 character of their family," these extinct animals " united the 

 characters of types which made their appearance at more 

 remote periods." What these still " more remote types" are, to 

 which extinct animals have but a partial connexion, we are not 

 informed. Who has seen them, or heard of them ? They are 

 clearly in nubibus. They must relate to imaginary animals, 

 created before all those whose remains have been discovered ! 

 If this inference is not to be drawn from the passage, here fully 

 quoted, I must confess its meaning is utterly past my compre- 

 hension. But again, if all those extinct animals which have 

 been discovered show us, as the writer himself admits, the 

 *' usual character of their family," as seen in the recent types of 

 that family, the logical inference follows, that both belong to 



