14 HISTORICAL SKETCH 



any insight how, for instance, a woodpecker has become 

 adapted to its peculiar habits of life. The work, from its 

 powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the earlier 

 editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of 

 scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. 

 In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in 

 calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and 

 in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous 

 views. 



In 1846 the veteran geologist M. J. d'Omalius d'Halloy 

 published in an excellent though short paper ('Bulletins de 

 I'Acad. Roy. Bruxelles,' torn. xiii. p. 581) his opinion that 

 it is more probable that new species have been produced by 

 descent with modification than that they have been separately 

 created: the author first promulgated this opinion in 1831. 



Professor Owen, in 1849 ('Nature of Limbs,' p. 86), 

 wrote as follows: — "The archetypal idea was manifested in 

 the flesh under diverse such modifications, upon this planet, 

 long prior to the existence of those animal species that 

 actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or secondary 

 causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic 

 phenomena may have been committed, we, as yet, are igno- 

 rant." In his Address to the British Association, in 1858, 

 he speaks (p. li.) of "the axiom of the continuous operation 

 of creative power, or of the ordained becoming of living 

 things." Farther on (p. xc), after referring to geographical 

 distribution, he adds, "These phenomena shake our confi- 

 dence in the conclusion that the Apteryx of New Zealand 

 and the Red Grouse of England were distinct creations in and 

 for those islands respectively. Always, also, it may be well 

 to bear in mind that by the word ' creation ' the zoologist 

 means ' a process he knows not what' " He amplifies this 

 idea by adding that when such cases as that of the Red 

 Grouse are " enumerated by the zoologist as evidence of dis- 

 tinct creation of the bird in and for such islands, he chiefly 

 expresses that he knows not how the Red Grouse came to be 

 there, and there exclusively ; signifying also, by this mode of 

 expressing such ignorance, his belief that both the bird and 

 the islands owed their origin to a great first Creative Cause." 

 If we interpret these sentences given in the same Address, 



