206 suPEiirosiTioN not parental relation. 



Bat in this form at least it can be scarce necessary that 

 the argument should be prolonged. 



The geological phenomena, I repeat, even had the author 

 of the " Vestiges" been consulted in their arrangement, and 

 permitted to determine their sequence, would fail to furnish 

 a single presumption in favour of the development hypo- 

 thesis. Does the ditch-side of my illustration furnish it with 

 a single favouring presumption 1 The arrangement and se- 

 quence of the various organisms are complete in both the 

 zoological and phytological branch. The flag and reed suc- 

 ceed the fucoid ; the fir and juniper succeed the flag and reed ; 

 and the hazel, birch, and oak, succeed the fir and juniper. In 

 like manner, and with equal regularity, zoophytes, the radiata, 

 the articulata, mollusca, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, 

 are ranged, the superior in succession over the inferior classes, 

 in the true ascending order ; and yet we at once see that the 

 evidence of the ditch-side, amounting in the aggregate to no 

 more than this, that the remains of the higher lie over those 

 of the lower organisms, gives not a shadow of support to the 

 hypothesis that the lower produced the higher. For, ac- 

 cording to the honest farmer, the fact that any one thing is 

 found lying on the top of any other thing furnishes no pre- 

 sumption whatever that the thing below stands in the rela- 

 tion of parent to the thing above. And the evidence which 

 the well-ranged organisms of the ditch-side do not furnish, 

 the organisms of the entire geologic scale, even were they 

 equally well ranged, would fail to supply. The fossiliferous 

 portion of the ditch-side of my illustration may be, let us sup- 

 pose, some five or six feet in thickness ; the fossiliferous por- 

 tion of the earth's crust must be some five or six miles in 

 thickness. But the mere circumstance of space introduces 

 no new element into the question. Equally in both cases 

 the fact of superposition is not identical with the fact of pa- 

 rental relation, nor even in any degree an analogous fact. 



