130 RECENT ADVANCES IN NATURAL SCIENCE ix 



took more than two centuries of continuous and most acri- 

 monious discussion to convince the world, especially the 

 theological world, that these were the actual remains of 

 animals which had once lived in a former period of the earth's 

 history. Their evidence is now, however, universally admitted 

 as supplying knowledge of the changed conditions of the 

 surface of the earth, and with equal clearness do these rudi- 

 mentary organs, hidden in the secret recesses of the whale's 

 body, furnish, to those who inquire, indications that the 

 animal has passed through phases of existence unlike those 

 in which we now see it. 



I do not for a moment assert that the new view explains 

 everything that we students of nature are longing to know, 

 or that we do not everywhere meet with obscure problems 

 and perplexing difficulties, facts that we cannot account for, 

 and breaks in the chain of evidence. As to the details and 

 mode of operation of the secondary laws by which variation 

 and modification have been brought about, we are far from 

 being in accord. Happy for us that it is so, or our work 

 would be at an end. I only maintain that the transmutation 

 view removes more difficulties, requires fewer assumptions, 

 and presents so much more consistency with observed facts, 

 than that which it seeks to supersede, and is, therefore, so 

 generally accepted, that there is no more probability of its 

 being abandoned, and the old doctrine of the fixity of species 

 revived, than that we should revert to the old astronomical 

 theories which placed the earth in the centre of the universe, 

 and limited the date of its creation to six ordinary days. 



The question of the fixity or the transmutation of species 

 is a purely scientific one, only to be discussed and decided 

 on scientific grounds. To the naturalist, it is clearly one of 

 extreme importance, as it gives him for the first time a key 

 to the interpretation of the phenomena with which he has 

 to deal. It may seem to many that a question like this is 

 entirely beside the business of a Church Congress, as it is 

 one with which only those expert in the ways of scientific 

 investigation, and deeply imbued with knowledge of scientific 

 facts, could be called upon to deal. This would certainly 

 have been my view, if it had not been that some who, from 



