GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 797 



the analogy of the mammalian Hipparion and Equus, we may 

 expect the corresponding precedent form of the Papuan of the 

 well- wooded and richly fruited islands representing a departed 

 tropical or subtropical continent, to be exemplified by fossils in 

 formations not earlier than middle tertiary. All species coexisting 

 with the actual specific form of Homo will, with him, be immu- 

 table, or mutable only as he may be. To name such species, after 

 comparing and determining their specific characters, will continue 

 to be the Zoologist's staple task as long as his own specific 

 intellectual character remains unchanged (Pref. p. xxxvi.). To 

 suppose that coexisting differentiations and specialisations, such 

 as Equus and Rhinoceros, or either of these and Tapirus, which 

 have diverged to generic distinctions from an antecedent com- 

 mon form, to be transmutable one into another, would be as 

 unscientific, not to say absurd, as the idea, which has been bols- 

 tered up by so many questionable illustrations, and foisted upon 

 poor f working men,' of their derivation from a Gorilla ! 



§ 425. Extinction, cataclysmal or regulated? — If, in place of 

 recognising the series of the above-cited Perissodactyles as evi- 

 dencing (preordained) departures from parental type, probably 

 sudden and seemingly monstrous, but adapting the progeny in- 

 heriting such modifications to higher purposes, the theological 

 notion be retained, and the species of Palseothere, Paloplothere, 

 Anchithere, Hipparion, and Horse, be severally deemed due 

 to remotely and successively repeated acts of direct creation, one 

 is concomitantly led to suppose the successive going out of such 

 species to have been as miraculous as their coming in. The 

 destruction of one creation is the logical preordinance to a re- 

 currence of ' genesis.' This nexus of ideas was too close not to 

 have swayed with Cuvier : accordingly, in his famous ' Discours 

 sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe,' we have a section 

 of ( Preuves que ces Revolutions ont eHe nombreuses,' x and 

 another section of ( Preuves que ces Revolutions ont ete subites.' 2 

 Continued observations of Geologists, while establishing the fact 

 of successive changes, have filled up the seeming chasms be- 

 tween such supposed • revolutions,' as the discoveries of Palaeonto- 

 logists have supplied the links between the species held to have 

 perished by the cataclysms. Each successive parcel of geo- 

 logical truth has tended to dissipate the belief in the unusually 

 sudden and violent nature of the changes recognisable in the 

 earth's surface. In specially directing my attention to this moot 

 point, whilst engaged in investigations of fossil remains, and in 

 1 cccxx". p. 5. 2 lb. p. 8. 



