4 ON THE SF.niF.S OF NATURE, 



one family group. I must confess, however, that to me the 

 wording of this objection is devoid both of precision and con- 

 sistency. But as it is far from my wish to pervert the Reviewer's 

 meaning, I shall view the objection in another light; viz. 

 as condemning the introduction, into the circular arrangement, 

 of such forms as more especially belonged to former ages of 

 the world. By what means, therefore, let me ask, has the 

 writer discovered that nature pursued a new set of primary 

 laws,* in every age or " day" of the creation ? If it could be 

 shown that the characters of any races of the fossil quadrupeds 

 were so anomalous as to exclude them from the great tribes or 

 families of living examples, — that their structure set at defiance 

 all those principles of variation with which we are now fami- 

 liar, — then, indeed, we should have something like presumptive 

 evidence to favour this writer's extraordinary cavil. But a 

 perusal of M. Cuvier's invaluable memoirs on these animals 

 would have satisfied the Reviewer that such anomalies did not 

 occur. And we, " the circular theorists," can assure him we 

 are not behind-hand in the power of assigning nearly all these 

 animals to their legitimate station in the one scheme of nature. 

 But if what I have here urged in defence of introducing fossil 

 animals into the natural system will not satisfy the Reviewer, 

 his own authority, M. Cuvier himself, shall cancel his objec- 

 tion. We beg, therefore, he will turn to the first volume of 

 the Regno Animal, and he will there discover, doubtless to his 

 no small astonishment, that the extinct genera of Mastodon, 

 Anoplotherium, Paleothcrium, and Lophiodon, are actually in- 

 troduced in the natural series, and incorporated with the living 

 species of the Pachydermes, as part and parcel of that order : 

 for although, as every Zoological student knows, these genera 

 are all fossil ; yet, to use the writer's own words, " they have 

 the usual characters of i\\e\x family" — or rather, order. And, 

 accoi'dingly, M. Cuvier introduces them in the true series of 

 Pachydermata. Here again the Reviewer, in condemning the 

 circular theorists, condemns alike the Regno Animal. 



The third objection against the circular theory is, that " the 

 general form or contour of an animal is made a primary distinc- 

 tion;" meaning, I presume, that the outer structure of an 



' I speak not here oi variation of form, but of the principles upon which that 

 variation of form is regulated. — See my volume, On the Geography and 

 Classification of Animals, p. 2'21'. 



