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Additional Remarks on the Climate of the Arctic Regions, in 

 Answer to Mr Conybeare. By the Rev. John Fleming, 

 D. D. F. R. S. E. (Communicated by the Author.) 



The remarks which I communicated in the April number of 

 this Journal, " On the value of the Evidence from the Animal 

 Kingdom, tending to prove that the Arctic Regions formerly en- 

 joyed a milder Climate tlian at present," were not intended to of- 

 fend any class of readers, and did not seem likely to provoke any 

 angry discussion. My surprise was therefore considerable, when 

 I found, in the following Number of the Journal, an " Answer*' 

 to my paper, by the Rev. Mr Conybeare, in which the author 

 has betrayed a degree of irritation incomprehensible in the pecu- 

 liar circumstances of the case, and has exhibited such a want of 

 accurate information, sound judgment, and good taste, as to re- 

 call the character which Martin Lister gave of certain geologists 

 in his day : — " It is to be observed (says he) where men are 

 most in the dark, there impudence reigns most : they are not 

 content fairly to dissent, but to insult every body else." Indeed 

 the whole character of the paper differed so much from the esti- 

 mate I had previously formed of Mr Conybeare's attainments, 

 that I was disposed to indulge the hope that he would, upon due 

 consideration, do himself justice by voluntarily avowing the mis- 

 takes into which he had been betrayed. His silence, however, 

 has left me no other course to pursue, than the painful one of 

 exhibiting him to the readers of this Journal in a light which 

 will probably fill their minds with surprise, and perhaps his own 

 with mortification. 



In the paper which has given rise to this discussion, I at- 

 tempted to point out the value of Analogy as an instrument of 

 research in Natural History, and the danger arising to geology 

 in particular, from confounding the terms genus and species. 

 The important question which I proposed to solve, was thus 

 stated : — " Supposing ourselves acquainted with the habits and 

 distribution of one species of a genus, can we predicate, with any 

 degree of safety, concerning the habits and distribution of the 

 other species with which it is gencrically connected .-*" In order 

 to proceed with due caution, I investigated the three following 

 conditions : — " 1. If two animals resemble each other in struc- 



OCTOBER DECEMBER 1829. E 



