84 THE READER WILL SUM UP THE EVIDENCE. [CHAP. III. 



may have heard out of court, will, when he has read the 

 foregoing remarks, perhaps be led to inquire whether 

 the ideas current amongst the great majority of natu- 

 ralists be not a clever, plausible, and well- expressed 

 hypothesis, rather than a series of facts which we may 

 admit without sure and unmistakable evidence for 

 them. The evidence is wanting : the steps by which 

 so wonderful a change in the form and habits of the 

 same creature have been made, cannot be shown ; and 

 we may be allowed, without offence, to hesitate before 

 we give in our adherence to the grand theory, that a 

 gradual change is going on in the nature and condition 

 of all animated creatures. 



We would wish to speak of Temminck and his con- 

 temporaries with all due respect. Natural science owes 

 them much ; they performed well the difficult task of 

 arranging and describing the existing forms which were 

 offered to their study. Without this arrangement and 

 classification, as far as it proceeded, their followers 

 could have little hope of further advancing science. 

 They performed a great work, and we ought to be most 

 thankful to them for it. But that is no reason why we 

 should set up Temminck, or Buffon, or Lamarck, or 

 Blumenbach, as idols to be blindly worshipped, as was 

 Aristotle of yore, and push aside as profane and here- 

 tical any suspicion which will intrude itself, that some 

 of their conclusions, on a most mysterious and difficult 

 question, may possibly have been hasty, or even incor- 

 rect ; a question, too, for information respecting which 

 they confessedly relied upon other and less acute per- 

 sons, and which they really had not time and leisure, 

 amidst their many herculean tasks, to investigate for 

 themselves. Temminck at least indicates, by many ex- 



