TRANSMUTABLE. 59 



malia upon a different basis to that of Cuvier, 

 De Blainville, and others, which I have followed. 

 Founding his classification upon the development 

 of the brain, the animals will rise in the scale 

 as follows, and the reader may adopt this with 

 perhaps greater exactitude than the other: The 

 "duck mole" is at the bottom, we then go to 

 echidna, opossum, phalanger, kangaroo, wombat, 

 rat, hare, shrew, hedgehog, mole, bat, roussette, 

 (fruit-eating bat,) ant-eater, armadillo, sloth, 

 whale, porpoise, dugong, sea-cow, elephant, tapir, 

 horse, sheep, hog, seal, bear, dog, lemur, marmozet, 

 ape, man. 



Mr. Darwin says natural selection only acts 

 by giving to the animal some improvement by 

 which it can benefit itself in the "struggle for 

 existence," but "Natura non facit saltum." If 

 the opinion of naturalists is right as to the po- 

 sition the animals I have mentioned hold in the 

 scale, then it clearly must indicate the line through 

 which Mr. Darwin's principle has worked, and 

 as he distinctly says that he believes, (though 

 he infers more,) that each class has been formed 

 from one prototype, then he must believe that 

 the class Vertebrata, including the four sub-classes 

 fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, have been 

 derived from one form, and the line must, ac- 

 cording to the argument I have brought forward, 

 and Mr. D.'s own doctrine of "Natura non facit 

 saltum" have passed, though with many millions 

 of lost links, through the series of typical mam- 

 mals I have mentioned. 



