374 Miscellaneous. 
am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those 
belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants 
of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as 
the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of 
that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection 
has been the main, but not exclusive, means of modification.” 
This is the kernel of the new theory—the Darwinian creed, as 
recited at the close of the introduction to the remarkable book under 
consideration. The questions ‘‘ What will he do with it?” and 
‘‘ How far will he carry it?’ the author answers at the close of the 
volume: ‘I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modifica- 
tion embraces all the members of the same class.”? Furthermore, 
“I believe that all animals have descended from at most only four 
or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.” 
Seeing that analogy as strongly suggests a further step in the same 
direction, while he protests that ‘‘ analogy may be a deceitful guide,” 
yet he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that “ probably 
all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have de- 
scended from some one primordial form, into which life was first 
breathed *.” 
In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a 
little way ; in the last, the wedge is driven home. 
We have already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such 
a theory of derivation of species—reasons which give it plausibility, 
and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to 
changes occurring since the last tertiary period. We are well pleased 
at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in 
this respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial 
judgment of Pictet, the Swiss paleontologist. In his review of 
Darwin’s book +—much the fairest and most admirable opposing one 
that has yet appeared—he freely accepts that ensemédle of natural 
operations which Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name 
of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout the first 
chapters seems “dla fois prudent et fort,” and is disposed to accept 
the whole argument in its foundations,—that is, so far as it relates 
to what is now going on, or has taken place inthe present geological 
period, which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to 
the borders of the tertiaryt. Pictet accordingly admits that the 
* Page 484, Engl. ed. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, 
pp- 431, 432) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are 
referred to, and the remark is appended—* But this inference is chiefly 
ounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. 
‘The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata 
or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, &c., 
some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial 
arent.” 
+ In Bibliothéque Universelle de Genéve, Mars 1860. 
t This we learn from his very interesting article ‘De la Question de 
YHomme Fossile,’ in the same (March) number of the Bibliothéque 
Universelle. 
