EARLY REPTILIAN FOSSILS. 77 



become of no imaginable use but to obscure true 

 judgment. Now the Edinburgh reviewer has pre- 

 sented his subject, in this instance, in lineaments 

 entirely of his own imagining, and directly in con- 

 tradiction to those which belong to it. He had 

 no title to assume any plan of development, and 

 to represent his victory over that as a triumph 

 over the hypothesis of his author. In such con- 

 duct, he has thoroughly vitiated the whole fabric 

 of his criticism, and left it, in reality, no preten- 

 sion to remain for a moment in court, My im- 

 mediate object, however, is not to take such excep- 

 tions, but to show how the ascertained facts of a 

 limited portion of the field of nature may be re- 

 conciled with that conception to which a view of 

 what appears over the whole field may lead an 

 honest inquirer. 



If the hypothesis of a plurality of genetic lines 

 ^ admitted, we are not of course to ask which 

 urder of reptiles, or of any other class, first existed, 

 (such being the language of the old classification ;) 

 but, having first settled the whole affinities of the 

 animal kingdom on the new plan, we are to 

 inquire if the geological presentment oi the families 

 was accordant with the scheme, allowing for the 

 negative nature of much of the geological evidence 



