THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 471 



The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms 

 in which life was at one time active, increased to multitudes 

 and demanded classification. They were grouped in 

 genera, species, and varieties, according to the degree of 

 similarity subsisting between them. Thus confusion was 

 avoided, each object being found in the pigeon-hole 

 appropriated to it and to its fellows of similar morphological 

 or physiological character. The general fact soon became 

 evident that none but the simplest forms of life lie lowest 

 down; that, as we climb higher among the superimposed 

 strata, more perfect forms appear. The change, however, 

 from form to form was not continuous, but by steps some 

 small, some great. "A section," says Mr. Huxley, "a 

 hundred feet thick will exhibit at different heights a 

 dozen species of Ammonite, none of which passes beyond 

 the particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the zone 

 below it, or into that above it." In the presence of such 

 facts it was not possible to avoid the question: Have these 

 forms, showing, though in broken stages, and with many 

 irregularities, this unmistakable general advance, being 

 subjected to no continuous law of growth or variation? 

 Had our education been purely scientific, or had it been 

 sufficiently detached from influences which, however 

 ennobling in another domain, have always proved hindrances 

 and delusions when introduced as factors into the domain 

 of physics, the scientific mind never could have swerved 

 from the search for a law of growth, or allowed itself to 

 accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each suc- 

 cessive stratum, as a kind of mechanic's bench for the 

 manufacture of new species out of all relation to the old. 



Biased, however, by their previous education, the 

 great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative 

 act to account for the appearance of each new group of 

 organisms. Doubtless numbers of them were clear-headed 

 enough to see that this was no explanation at all that, in 

 point of fact, it was an attempt, by the introduction of a 

 greater difficulty, to account for a less. But, having 

 nothing to offer in the way of explanation, they for the 

 most part held their peace. Still the thoughts of reflect- 

 ing men naturally and necessarily simmered round the 

 question. De Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has 

 been brought into notice by Professor Huxley as one who 

 " hud a notion of the modifiability of living forms." The. 



