570 THE NATUEAL HISTORY REVIEW." " 



in accordance with most botanists, all those slight species classed 

 under the names of races and varieties as forms derived from a 

 primitive specific type, and having in consequence a common origin. 

 I go further : the best characterised species themselves are, in my 

 opinion, so many secondary forms relatively to some more ancient 

 type which actually comprised them all, as they themselves comprise 

 all the varieties to which they give birth under our eyes, when we 

 submit them to cultivation. 



Whether they allow it or not, all botanical describers feel in- 

 stinctively that the question of species is connected with that of 

 origin, and that in declaring that this form is a species, and that a 

 simple variety, they declare implicitly for a system determined with 

 relation to their origin. But, two systems only are possible. Either 

 species were created in the first instance such as they are now, and 

 ■in the same portions of the globe which they still occupy, and in 

 consequence mthout any mutual dependence, and without any other 

 than a metaphorical relationship ; or else they are united by the 

 bond of a common origin, are really related to each other, and 

 descend from common ancestors. The former system is the most 

 ancient ; it comes to us directly from the middle ages and is sup- 

 ported by Bible texts which, in my opinion, are falsely interpreted ; 

 it is cotemporary with and the complement as it were of that 

 geological system which made the globe proceed from the hands of 

 the Creator in the form which we now behold it, with the same 

 continents, the same seas, the same watersheds, the same mountains, 

 the same topography in a word, and in consequence, the same 

 animals and vegetables. In this system all is primordial, and ap- 

 pears as it were suddenly, by the sole act of the Divine Will with- 

 out antecedent phenomena, and without any evolution. In a word 

 it is the system of the supernatural, received by many Theologians, 

 as well Protestant as Catholic, and, it must be confessed, even by a 

 certain number of men of science. 



I am assuredly far from denying the Divine intervention in the 

 great act of creation, any more than I deny it in the phenomena of 

 the present world, where I see it unceasingly present. God does not 

 testify his power less in working by agents, than in operating 

 directly ; in proceeding by the way of revolution, by a logical series 

 of phenomena, than in proceeding by sudden gushes and by miracles. 

 The formation of an embryo in a fecundated ovule, the develop- 

 ment of this embryo into a feeble plant which bursts its integuments. 



