TRANSMUTABLE. 43 



of time." (Essay on Classification, page 76.) 



"Between two successive geological periods 

 then changes have taken place between animals 

 and plants. But none of those primordial forms 

 of life which naturalists call species, are known 

 to have changed during any of these periods. 7 ' 

 (Op. Cit, page 76.) "And nothing furnishes 

 the slightest argument in favour of their (species) 

 mutability. On the contrary every modern in- 

 vestigation has gone only to confirm the result 

 first obtained by Cuvier, and his views that 

 species are fixed." (Page 78.) "There is no 

 more reason to suppose species equally allied, 

 following one another in time to be derived one 

 from the other; and all that has been said in 

 preceding paragraphs respecting the differences 

 observed between species occurring in different 

 geological areas, applies with the same force to 

 species succeeding each other in the course of 

 time. When domesticated animals and cultivated 

 plants are mentioned as furnishing evidences of 

 the mutability of species, the circumstance is 

 constantly overlooked or passed over in silence, 

 that the first point to be established respecting 

 them, in order to justify any inference from 

 them against the fixity of species, would be to 

 shew that each of them has originated from one 

 common stock, which, far from being the case, 

 is flatly contradicted by the positive knowledge 

 we have that the varieties of several of them at 

 least are owing to the entire amalgamation of 

 different species." (Pages 81-82.) 



