UPPER AND LOWEB. 521 



lo ! among the expected dwarfs, there appear individuals of 

 more than the average bulk and stature. 



Still, however, the question of organization remains. Did 

 these ancient placoid fishes stand high or low in the scale ] 

 According to the poet, " What can we reason but from what 

 we know?" We are acquainted with the placoid fishes of 

 the present time ; and from these only, taking analogy as our 

 guide, can we form any judgment regarding the rank and 

 standing of their predecessors, the placoids of the geologic 

 periods. But the consideration of this question, as it is spe- 

 cially one on which the later assertors of the development 

 hypothesis concentrate themselves, I must, to secure the space 

 necessary for its discussion, defer till my next chapter. Mean- 

 while, I am conscious I owe an apology to the reader for what 

 he must deem tedious minuteness of description, and a too 

 prolix amplitude of statement. It is only by representing 

 things as they actually are, and in the true order of their oc- 

 currence, that the effect of the partially selected facts and ex- 

 aggerated descriptions of the Lamarckians can be adequately 

 met. True, the disadvantages of the more sober mode are 

 unavoidably great. He who feels himself at liberty to ar- 

 range his collected shells, corals, and fish-bones into artisti- 

 cally designed figures, and to select only the pretty ones, will 

 be of course able to make of them a much finer show than he 

 who is necessitated to represent them in the order and nu- 

 merical proportions in which they occur on some pebbly beach 

 washed by the sea. And such is the advantage, in a literary 

 point of view, of the ingenious theorist, who, in making figures 

 of his geological facts, takes no more of them than suits his 

 purpose, over the man who has to communicate the facts as 

 he finds them. But the homelier mode is the true one. " Could 

 we obtain," says a distinguished metaphysician, " a distinct 

 and full history of all that has passed in the mind of a child, 

 from the beginning of life and sensation till it grows up to 



