138 . TIME AND LIFE 



teach us much. Just as a small portion of a great curve 

 appears straight, the apparent absence of change in direction 

 of the line being the exponent of the vast extent of the 

 whole, in proportion to the part we see ; so, if it be true 

 that all living species are the result of the modification 

 of other and simpler forms, the existence of these little 

 altered persistent types, ranging through all geological 

 time, must indicate that they are but the final terms of an 

 enormous series of modifications, which had their being 

 in the great lapse of pregeologic time, and are now perhaps 

 for ever lost. 



In other words, when rightly studied, the teachings of 

 palaeontology are at one with those of physical geology. 

 Our farthest explorations carry us back but a little way 

 above the mouth of the great river of Life : where it 

 arose, and by what channels the noble tide has reached 

 the point when it first breaks upon our view, is hidden 

 from us. 



The foregoing pages contain the substance of a lecture 

 delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain 

 many months ago, and of course long before the appear- 

 ance of the remarkable work on the " Origin of Species," 

 just published by Mr. Darwin, who arrives at very similar 

 conclusions. Although, in one sense, I might fairly say 

 that my own views have been arrived at independently, 

 I do not know that I can claim any equitable right to 

 property hi them ; for it has long been my privilege to 

 enjoy Mr. Darwin's friendship, and to profit by corre- 

 sponding with him, and by, to some extent, becoming 

 acquainted with the workings of his singularly original 

 and well-stored mind. It was in consequence of my 

 knowledge of the general tenor of the researches in which 

 Mr. Darwin had been so long engaged ; because I had 

 the most complete confidence in his perseverance, his 

 knowledge, and, above all things, his high-minded love of 

 truth; and, moreover, because I found that the better I 

 became acquainted with the opinions of the best naturalists 

 regarding the vexed question of species, the less fixed they 

 seemed to be, and the more inclined they were to the 

 hypothesis of gradual modification, that I ventured to 

 speak as strongly as I have done in the final paragraphs 

 of my discourse. 



Thus, my daw having so many borrowed plumes, I seo 

 no impropriety in making a tail to this brief paper by 



