FOSSILS OF THE PERMIAN SYSTEM. 65 



have to answer an objection so mean. There is 

 no statement that the animals came in this order. 

 I have only put the words into this arrangement, 

 in accordance with the custom now commonly 

 followed of observing the ascending grades of the 

 animal kingdom. With respect, then, to what 

 follows — " The sentence on which we here com- 

 ment contains three distinct propositions, and all 

 three are false to nature, and no better than a 

 dream," — I believe I may safely leave the reader 

 to say which party is the falsifier and the dreamer. 

 He goes on in the same strain — " It is true that 

 the next step gives us fishes ; but it is not true 

 that the earliest fishes link on to the radiata : this 

 is a grand and at the present day an unpardonable 

 blunder." This is another dream of the reviewer, 

 for certainly such an afiinity was not suggested in 

 any edition of the Vestiges hitherto published. In 

 the first four editions, which alone were under his 

 notice, no passage except fi-om the articulata was 

 even hinted at. So much as a proof of the re- 

 viewer's recklessness in making charges ; there is 

 no need, however, to affirm, with him, that a con- 

 nexion between certain high radiates and some 

 of the lowest fishes does not exist. I venture to 



