OBSERVATIONS GENERALIZED. 221 



4 



connecting links between lower and higher species, and be- 

 tween widely dissimilar species existing in the same system 

 of deposits, he generalizes the field of geological observation, 

 and finds particular systems, both of rocks and their con- 

 tained fossils, more fully and particularly represented in some 

 localities than others. By the facts which he develops in this 

 branch of the discussion, he succeeds in materially weakening, 

 though perhaps not entirely disproving, the assumptions of his 

 opponents, that the character of organic life has been subject 

 to frequent abrupt and entire changes. He considers it prob- 

 able, moreover, that " development has not proceeded, as 

 usually assumed, upon a single line, which would require all 

 the animals to be placed one after another, but in a plurality 

 of lines, in which the orders, and even minuter subdivisions 

 of each class are ranged side by side ;" and he argues that 

 " the development of these various lines has proceeded inde- 

 pendently in various regions of the earth, so as to lead to 

 forms not everywhere so like as to fall within our ideas 

 of specific character, but generally, or in some more vague 

 degree, alike." 



Upon the whole,. the author reasserts his main position with 

 so much force and ingenuity, and brings to it such an accession 

 of evidence from the testimonies of geologists and naturalists, 

 as apparently to render the general onslaught of his opponents, 

 for the most part, a failure; and perhaps it would not be 

 unfair to consider their subsequent silence as, in some degree, 

 a tacit admission of this fact. 



Though the author of the " Vestiges" acknowledges that 

 God is, in some sense, ever present with his creation, and 

 supports and rules it by his Providence, he admits this merely 

 as the intimation of an internal sense or feeling, for which he 

 does not pretend to have any philosophy. But in the absence 



