Permanence and Evolution. 129 



So the rudimentary organs, on which so 

 much stress is laid, as traces of former perfect 

 organs, could probably be about as well inter- 

 preted as indicating the stages by which the 

 organs were developed, and the genealogy of 

 the horse be read in an inverted sense, were 

 Equus Eocene and Orohippus modern. How far 

 from the precision of a scientific law, or even a 

 scientific hypothesis, is a theory which furnishes 

 such easy explanations of almost any conceiv- 

 able state of facts, however opposite ! 



Also it ought to be considered that while 

 endeavours have often been made by Dar- 

 winists to trace the mode by which the 

 larger divisions have been evolved one from 

 the other, pedigrees have been drawn up of the 

 descent of mammals on the one hand, and birds 

 on the other, from reptiles as a common root, 

 and this has been done with some plausibility, 

 though no one, I should think, can fail to see 

 how remote this is from anything that can be even 



K 



