TRANSMUTABLE. 217 



intended for the perusal of the youth of the rising 

 generation, venture on an analogy so false, as 

 that of comparing the variation of a language with 

 the transmutation of organisms, so totally different 

 from each other in minute anatomy, and habits 

 of life? The effect upon my own mind will be 

 merely to doubt that gentleman's analogies in 

 future; but what the impressions may be upon 

 the young, and the thoughtless, when told that 

 they had a common origin with a fish, a snake, 

 a bird, or a beast of the forest, I will not ven- 

 ture to predict. I can only express a hope that 

 the error will be rectified, arid the antidote spread 

 as widely as the bane. 



In the "British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical 

 Review," for April, 1860, there is also a very 

 lengthened review of Mr. Darwin's book. The 

 writer is, I dare say, well known among scientific 

 men, in the London coteries. I have, however, 

 not the slightest knowledge of the position he 

 holds in the scientific world, but I assume it to 

 be a high one, from the rank which the Journal, 

 in which he writes, maintains, and also from 

 the general manner in which the article is 

 executed. In a critique, extending over thirty- 

 seven pages of closely-printed matter, this writer 

 does everything he can, to prove the truth of 

 Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. He considers the theory 

 as having hit the exact truth; and he says he 

 does not hesitate to call it a wonderful book. 



Whatever may, however, be the position of the 

 writer in the scientific world, I will point out 



