368 Professor Huxley on ' The Origin of Species' [April 9, 



by whicli the ancient civets passed into the more modern hyasnas; 

 through the Tertiary deposits of Western America, Marsh tracked 

 the successive forms by which the ancient stock of the horse has 

 passed into its present form ; and innumerable less complete indica- 

 tions of the mode of evolution of other groups of the higher mammalia 

 have been obtained. 



In the remarkable memoir on the phosphorites of Quercy, to 

 which I have referred, M. Filhol describes no fewer than seventeen 

 varieties of the genus Cynodidis, which fill up all the interval between 

 the viverine animals and the bear-like dog AmpMcyon ; nor do I 

 know any solid ground of objection to the supposition that in this 

 CyTwdidis-Amphicyon group we have the stock whence all the Yive- 

 ridsB, FelidsB, Hysenidae, Canidae, and perhaps the ProcyonidsB and 

 Ursidae, of the present fauna have been evolved. On the contrary, 

 there is a great deal to be said in favour. 



In the course of summing up his results, M. Filhol observes * : — 



" During the epoch of the phosphorites, great changes took place 

 in animal forms, and almost the same types as those which now exist 

 became defined from one another. 



" Under the influence of natural conditions of which we have no 

 exact knowledge, though traces of them are discoverable, species have 

 been modified in a thousand ways : races have arisen which, becoming 

 fixel, have thus produced a corresponding number of secondary 

 species." 



In 1859, language of which this is an unintentional paraphrase, 

 occurring in the ' Origin of Species,' was scouted as wild speculation ; 

 at present, it is a sober statement of the conclusions to which an 

 acute and critically-minded investigator is led by large and patient 

 study of the facts of palaeontology. I venture to repeat what I have 

 said before, that, so far as the animal world is concerned, evolution 

 is no longer a speculation, but a statement of historical fact. It 

 takes place alongside of those accepted truths which must be taken 

 into account by philosophers of all schools. 



Thus when, on the first day of October next, the 'Origin of 

 Species ' comes of age, the promise of its youth will be amply ful- 

 filled ; and we shall be prepared to congratulate the venerated author 

 of the book, not only that the greatness of his achievement and its 

 enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge have won him a 

 place beside our Harvey ; but, still more, that, like Harvey, he 

 has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to 

 see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of the 

 corner. 



[T. H. H.] 



This passage was omitted in the delivery of the lecture. 



