132 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



from only having a small portion of yellow in the commissure 

 of its bill. At the same time, in palaeontology, such a 

 peculiarity as an extra-plication in the enamel of a fossil 

 pachiderm's tooth, is sufficient to obtain a specific name for 

 that animal, and constitute its origin a separate miracle. 

 With equal facility, naturalists of this predominant order 

 make up groups of species into genera, and groups of genera 

 into families and tribes. 



Suppose the doctrine were to be taken according to the 

 practice, we should possess a fact speaking strongly against 

 fixity of species. It has been pointed out by an eminent 

 botanist that, amongst recent fossil plants, are poplars, pines, 

 birches, and hornbeams, like those now existing, but not the 

 same. Thus one species has replaced another in even com- 

 paratively recent times. It may be asked, if the same change 

 of species has not been going on since. The vague descrip- 

 tions of ancient botanists forbid our speaking confidently of 

 the intermediate ages. But look to the present time. In 

 districts examined narrowly at no distant day, new species 

 are continually being found by new investigators. It will be 

 said, that these additions are owing to the acuteness of 

 modern observers. But this is begging the whole question. 

 " We do not know," says our author, " that we are entitled 

 to assert that botanists were so mole-eyed thirty years ago, 

 that their quick-sighted successors have been able to add 

 twenty-five per cent, to the number of ascertained species 

 growing at their own doors." ( 6I ) Grant, then, that the pecu- 

 liar plants in question really are species, the probability un- 

 doubtedly is, that they are new species, true examples of that 

 very phenomenon which the superstition of science would 

 hold to be a supernatural event. 



Still take the doctrine according to the practice, and let us 

 see how it stands with regard to certain facts recently ascer- 

 tained. Amidst all the dogmatism which has been indulged 

 in on this subject, the assumed distinction of species has 

 given way in numberless instances, both in the vegetable and 

 animal kingdoms. In botany, the wider distinction of genus, 

 and even that of whole tribes, has proved in some cases falla- 



