PRIMITIVE MAN. 327 



are so much alike, that much confusion has arisen in 

 tracing their development. It is also true that some 

 of these creatures can subsist under very dissimilar 

 conditions, and in very diverse states, and that under 

 the specious name of Biology,* we sometimes find a 

 mass of these confusions, inaccurate observations and 

 varietal differences made to do duty for scientific facts. 

 But all this does not invalidate the grand primary 

 distinction between the animal and the plant, which 

 should be thoroughly taught and illustrated to all 

 young naturalists, as one of the best antidotes to 

 the fallacies of the evolutionist school. 



A third is that between any species of animal or 

 plant and any other species. It was this gap, and 

 this only, which Darwin undertook to fill up by his 

 great work on the origin of species, but, notwith- 

 standing the immense amount of material thus ex- 

 pended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be 



* It is doubtful whether men who deny the existence of vital 

 force have a right to call their science " Biology," any more 

 than atheists have to call their doctrine " Theology ; " and it is 

 certain that the assumption of a science of Biology as distinct 

 from Phytology and Zoology, or including both, is of the 

 nature of a " pious fraud " on the part of the more enlightened 

 evolutionists. The objections stated in the text, to what have 

 been called Archebiosis and Heterogenesis seem perfectly ap- 

 plicable, in so far as I can judge from a friendly review by 

 Wallace, to the mass of heterogeneous material accumulated 

 by Dr. Bastian in his recent volumes. The conclusions of 

 this writer, would also, if established, involve evolution in a 

 fatal embarras des richesses, by the hourly production during 

 all geological time, of millions of new forms all capable of 

 indefinite development. 



