80 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



those which live upon them. Those which are 

 everywhere found in innumerable specimens, must 

 have been introduced in numbers capable of main- 

 taining their normal proportions to those which live 

 isolated, and are comparatively and constantly fewer. 

 For we know that this harmony in the numerical 

 proportions between animals is one of the great 

 laws of nature. The circumstance that species occur 

 within definite limits, where no obstacles prevent 

 their wider distribution, leads to the further infer- 

 ence that these limits were assigned to them from 

 the beginning ; and so we should come to the final 

 conclusion that the order which prevails throughout 

 nature is intentional, and that it is regulated by the 

 limits marked out the first day of creation, and that 

 it has been maintained unchanged through ages, 

 with no other modifications than those which the 

 higher intellectual powers of man enable him to im- 

 pose on some few animals more closely connected 

 with him." 1 



According to Agassiz, therefore, not only is the 

 origin of species supernatural, but their general 

 geographical distribution is also supernatural. And 

 more than this. Not only are all the phenomena of 

 origin, distribution and extinction of animal and 

 vegetable life, to be directly referred to the Divine 

 will, but also, he will have it, " Every adaptation of 

 species to climate, and of species to species, is as ab- 

 original, and, therefore, as inexplicable, as are the 

 organic forms themselves." " The facts of geology," 



1 ' Lake Superior," p. 337. 



