DARWIN. 91 



on the Mutual Affinity of Plants and Animals. The 

 first of these is one of the most difficult portions of the 

 subject, and yet remains as a stumbling-block of science 

 by its apparently inexplicable phenomena. The author 

 throws on the past history of life on the earth the 

 glamour of a fairy record, as he contemplates the infinite 

 number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, 

 which must have succeeded one another in the long roll 

 of years, the limited extent to which at any time fossil 

 remains have been preserved, the immense amount of 

 destruction of such records which has taken place ; and 

 hence argues most powerfully how improbable it is that 

 the transitional stages from species to species should have 

 been handed down and also (another rare chance) have 

 been laid open to us. The great array of facts about 

 extinct animals and plants is shown to be consistent with, 

 and to be largely explained by, descent with modification, 

 and to be incomprehensible on any other view. The 

 eccentric contrasts and parallelisms displayed in the 

 geographical distribution of plants and animals, the 

 striking effects of barriers such as mountains, deserts, 

 and seas, the phenomena of dispersion of living creatures, 

 the indications of old glacial periods in the present distri- 

 bution of Alpine plants, the strange distribution of fresh- 

 water animals and plants, the specialities of oceanic 

 islands, and many other subjects of a like kind, are 

 dealt with, all being turned to advantage, and shown 

 to give strong support to Darwin's view. 



Classification and classifiers are all made to bear testi- 

 mony in the same direction. Morphology, which, in the 

 hands of Huxley, Haeckel, Gegenbaur, Ray Lankester, 



