NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 105 



In the first extract we have the thin end of the 

 wedge driven a little way ; in the last, the wedge 

 driven home. < 



"We have already sketched some of the reasons 

 suggestive of such a theory of derivation of species, 

 reasons which gave it plausibility, and even no small 

 probability, as applied to our actual world and to 

 changes occurring since the latest tertiary period. 

 We are well pleased at this moment to find that the 

 conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are 

 sustained by the very high authority and impartial 

 judgment of Pictet, the Swiss paleontologist. In his 

 review of Darwin's book 1 the fairest and most ad- 

 mirable opposing one that has appeared he freely 

 accepts that ensemble of natural operations which 

 Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name 

 of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition 

 throughout the first chapters seems " d la fois pru- 

 dent et fort" and is disposed to accept the whole 

 argument in its foundations, that is, so far as it re- 

 lates to what is now going on, or has taken place in 

 the present geological period which period he car- 

 ries back through the diluvial epoch to the borders 

 of the tertiary.* Pictet accordingly admits that the 



extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended : "But this 

 inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether 

 or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each 

 great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata ; for here we have in the 

 laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all 

 have descended from a single primordial parent." 



1 In Bibliotheque Uhiverselle de Geneve, March, 1860. 



2 This we learn from his very interesting article, " De la Question 



