42 EVOL UTION AND NATURAL THEOL G Y. 



a correct idea of the whole. One of our poets 

 lias expressed this idea as follows : 



" Each moss, 



Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank 

 Important in the plan of Him who framed 

 This scale of beings, holds a rank, which lost, 

 Would break the chain, and leave a gap between 

 That Nature's self would rue." 



But this view was propounded in ignorance 

 of the enormous number of species which have be- 

 come extinct, the vast self-adjusting economy of 

 the true System of Nature, and the most obvious 

 facts of Geographical Distribution. Species 

 were then numbered by fewer hundreds than 

 we now reckon thousands, and every specimen 

 the exact locality of which was unknown, was 

 vaguely entered as " from the Indies ;" although 

 a naturalist of any experience can now frequently 

 make a tolerably accurate guess at the locality 

 of any unlabelled specimen before him, much 

 more of a series of specimens. As the knowledge 

 of species increased, it was soon discovered that 

 there were many side-links which would not har- 

 monise with the idea of a connected chain, and 

 that there were frequently great gaps between 

 species, as if the intermediate links were wanting. 

 This rendered the supposed chain very broken 



