330 NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE AND RELATIONS 



as correct to say that they were remarkable for the non-em- 

 bryonic characteristic of a dermal skeleton developed greatly 

 in advance of an internal one, as to say, looking at their in- 

 ternal framework alone, that they were marked by the em- 

 bryonic characteristic of a cartilaginous skeleton.* I would 

 humbly suggest that the peculiarity on which the distin- 

 guished ichthyologist seems disposed to found so much is 

 simply one of those partial resemblances useful in the lite- 

 rature of science for purposes of illustration, but which, be- 

 cause they fail in certain points, and would inevitably lead 

 to error if carried beyond a certain line, cannot be regarded 

 as themselves scientific. They belong not to the province of 

 science, but to the department of art ; they are not things 

 to be shown as true, but mere reflected lights by which true 

 things may be shown. And in their own proper place, and 

 regarded as merely artistic, not scientific, they have unques- 

 tionably their use. 



Let me, however, remark, in conclusion, that the distin- 

 guished man, — first in his own special walk in the world. 

 — whose embryonic views I would at once receive in the cha- 

 racter of illustration, but not in the form of a theoiy ade- 

 quately fitted to unlock the scheme of creation, — is, like all 

 the practical geologists of the present day, a decided oi> 

 ponent of the Lamarckian hypothesis of hereditary develop- 

 ment. In a reference, in one of his later works, the " Prin- 

 ciples of Zoology," to that chain of progressive being which 

 so strangely connects the present with the remote past, we 

 find him remarking, that the connection is not to be regarded 

 as the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of 

 different ages. " There is nothing," he adds, " like parental 



* If, likewise, well-ossified vertebrae have been in any case united with 

 the early ganoid denno-skeleton, as we have now the best reason to sup- 

 pose, the ground is yet more completely cut away from beneath the assert* 

 ore of foetal development as a key to the history of creation. — L. M- 



