1868. ] Darwin and Pangenesis. 301 
step new and more completely organized forms have been super- 
seding old and (in one sense) less perfect ones. Where links have 
been missing one day, they have been discovered the next. Gaps 
which appeared insurmountable are constantly being bridged over 
by the discovery of organic remains, notwithstanding that a great 
portion of these are still concealed from human research. The 
growth of the individual is completely typical of what the advo- 
eates of descent by modification maintain to have been the history 
of animated nature. 
All these facts are strongly in favour of the theory of the forma- 
tion of new species by modified descent, and what evidence have the 
advocates of the opposite theory to advance in its favour? Indeed, 
it is difficult to find out what their theory really is, or rather what 
their theories are, for it would hardly be possible to find half-a-dozen 
anti-Darwinians who, if they think at all, think alike. 
Leaving out of the question the means by which the modifica- 
tions have been brought about, but not doubting for an instant that 
it has been by slow gradation and natural agencies, and without 
any derangement of the laws of nature as generally accepted by 
mankind, we conceive that at least sufficient valid evidence has now 
been laid before the scientific world to justify its acceptance, pure 
and simple, of the law of descent by modification, from the operation 
of which law there is no reason whatever to exclude Man ; and all 
unbiassed thinkers will now expect from the opponents of that 
theory that they will desist from attacking the new and rational 
doctrine with absurd theological denunciations, or with quibbles 
concerning the precise nature of the zoological term “ species,” but 
that they will put forward a clear defence of some definite doctrine 
of their own; will explain with ordinary clearness how they believe 
new types really have been introduced, and will support their defence 
by well-established scientific data. 
We all know how easy and convenient it is to dash off an article 
upon such a work as the one before us, in which the world is 
informed in two or three columns of pompous common-places, that 
the reviewer sees no new proof of the author’s theory, and that 
until such proofs are forthcoming, it must continue to be regarded 
as “ purely hypothetical ;” in other words, that persons who have 
no inclination to believe it, may reject it until the critic does 
see some convincing proof of its validity; and of course it is much 
easier, and, in a reviewing sense, pays much better to make such 
an announcement a week after the volumes have appeared (which 
have employed ten years of the author’s life), than if the criti- 
cism be reserved for even a fortnight’s perusal and consideration. 
It is equally facile, in these days of free-thought, for a person 
whose biological doctrines have been imbibed from the first chapter 
of Genesis, and some elementary work on Natural History, to 
