i 4 2 FAMOUS SCOTS 



is not one of them ; and should the experience be 

 invariable, as it already seems extensive, that im- 

 mediately beneath the fucoidal beds organic remains 

 cease, I do not see how the conclusion is to be avoided, 

 that they represent the period in which, at least, exist- 

 ences capable of preservation were first introduced.' 

 Indeed the hypothesis of Darwin would fall under the 

 remark of Herodotus, that the old theorisers and 

 speculators at the last resort betook themselves to a 

 belief in an imaginary ocean-river or to something in 

 the interior of the earth where observation was of 

 necessity excluded. For, as Professor Bain says, the 

 assertion of a fact wholly beyond the reach of evidence 

 for or against, is to be held as untrue : we are not 

 obliged to show that a thing is not, the burden lies on 

 them who maintain that the thing is. 



We have said that those who ultimately live in each 

 branch of science are few. It is only by the combina- 

 tion in perfection of imagination and observation that 

 success is ensured. Miller had noticed in the writer of 

 the Vestiges the absence of original observation and 

 abstract thinking, or the power of seeing and reasoning 

 for himself. In truth, there is something in geological 

 speculation akin to what Professor Jebb has noticed in 

 the field of classical emendation and of textual criticism, 

 especially in Germany, where scholarship is a crowded 

 profession, and eminence is often temporarily won by 

 boldness of handling the texts. But even Ritschl, with 

 all his heavy apparatus of learning, singularly fails in 



