292 PROCEEDrNGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



" If species are so unstable and so susceptible of mutation through such in- 

 fluences, why does that extinct form stand out so signally a monument of 

 stability? By his admirable researches and earnest writings, Darwin has, be- 

 yond all his cotemporaries, given an impulse to the philosophical investiga- 

 tion of the most backward and obscure branch of the biological sciences of 

 bis day ; he has laid the foundation of a great edifice; but he need not be 

 surprised if, in the progress of erection, the superstructure is altered by his 

 successors, like the Duomo of Milan, from the Roman to a different style of 

 architecture. 



"The inferences which I draw from these facts are not opposed to one of 

 the leading propositions of Darwin's theory. 



" With him I have no faith in the opinion that the mammoth and other 

 extinct elephants made their appearance suddenly, after the type in which 

 their fossil remains are presented to us. The most rational view seems to be, 

 that they are in some shape the modified descendants of earlier progenitors. 

 But if the asserted facts be correct, they seem clearly to indicate that the 

 older elephants of Europe, such asE. meridionalis and E. antiquus, 

 were not the stocks from which the later species, E. primigenius and E. 

 africanus sprung, and that we must look elsewhere for their origin. The 

 nearest affinity, and that a very close one, of the European E. meridiona- 

 lis, is with the miocene E. (Loxod.) planifrons of India, and of E. p r i - 

 m i g e n i u s with the existing Indian species. 



" Another reflection is equally strong in my mind, that the species by ' natu- 

 ral selection,' or a process of variation, from external influences, are inade- 

 quate to account for the phenomena. The law of Phyllotaxis, which governs 

 the evolution of leaves around the axis of a plant, is nearly as constant in 

 its manifestation as any of the physical laws connected with the material 

 world." 



(T. As affecting specific characters. 



As I have hitherto attempted to prove, that the higher grade of groups, or, 

 in other words, the higher grade of characters, could not have had their 

 origin through natural selection alone, though admitting it as a conserving or 

 restricting principle, I now come to ground where natural selection must be 

 allowed full sway. The "origin of species" is not the object of this essay, 

 as a greater has gone before me, and has done a great deal towards showing 

 that a selective power, dependent on adaptation and teleological relation, has 

 favored or repressed, or even called into existence, the varied peculiarities 

 that characterize species and races. I will therefore only refer to his well 

 known works on the Origin of Species and the Modifications of Animals under 

 Domestication. 



I may add that it is within the range of possibility that that grade or kind 

 of characters found to define ih.Q family group, may be more or less the result 

 of natural selection. 



Acceleration and retardation is also far from excluded from the probable 

 causes of specific characters. The species of many genera do exhibit a pro- 

 portion of characters which are the successive stages of that one which pro- 

 gresses farthest, as the species of Amblystoma in the position of their teeth, 

 nostrils, form of tail and coloration ; of Hyla in form of vomerine teeth, etc. 

 But the majority of specific characters are of divergent origin, — are " mor- 

 phic " as distinguished from developmental. 



(. On metaphysical species. 

 One of the arguments employed against the developmental hypothesis in 

 any form, is that that inherent " potentiality " which causes that like shall al- 

 ways produce like, is a metaphysical being, which cannot be transformed, and 

 which holds the structure which it vivifies as a material expression or stamp 

 of itself, and which therefore cannot be changed. 



[Oct. 



