VARIATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES. 143 



the result of my observation, in so far as it has extended over 

 the European area, is, that the specific characters of the 

 molars are constant in each, within a moderate range of varia- 

 tion, and that we nowhere meet with intermediate forms." 

 . . . Dr. Falconer continues (p. 80) : — ■ 



" The inferences which I draw from these facts are not opposed 

 to one of the leading propositions of Darwin's theory. With him, I 

 have no faith in the opinion that the Mammoth and other extinct 

 Elephants made their appearance suddenly, after the type in which 

 their fossil remains are presented to us. The most rational view 

 seems to be, that they are in some shape the modified descendants 

 of earlier progenitors. But if the asserted facts he correct, they 

 seem clearly to indicate that the older elephants of Europe, such as 

 E. meridionalis and E. antiquus, were not the stocks from which 

 the later species, E. primigenius and E. Africanus, sprung, and 

 that we must look elsewhere for their origin. The nearest affinity, 

 and that a very close one, of the European E. meridionalis is with 

 the Miocene E. planifrons of India ; and of E. primigenius, with 

 the existing India species. 



" Another reflexion is equally strong in my mind, — that the 

 means which have heen adduced to explain the origin of the species 

 by ' Natural Selection,' or a process of variation from external in- 

 fluences, are inadequate to account for the phenomena. The law of 

 phyllotaxis, which governs the evolution of leaves around the axis 

 of a plant, is as nearly constant in its manifestation as any of the 

 physical laws connected with the material world. Each instance, 

 nowever different from another, can he shown to be a term of some 

 series of continued fractions. When this is coupled with the geo- 

 metrical law governing the evolution of form, so manifest in some 

 departments of the animal kingdom, e. g., the spiral shells of the 

 Mollusca, it is difficult to believe that there is not, in nature, a 

 deeper-seated and innate principle, to the operation of which Natural 

 Selection is merely an adjunct. The whole range of the Mammalia, 

 fossil and recent, cannot furnish a species which has had a wider 

 geographical distribution, and passed through a longer term of time, 

 and through more extreme changes of climatal conditions, than the 

 Mammoth. If species are so unstable, and so susceptible of muta- 

 tion through such influences, why does that extinct form stand out so 

 signally a monument of stability ? By his admirable researches and 

 earnest writings, Darwin has, beyond all his cotemporaries, given 



