804 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



are prepared for it, at once suggests itself. I assume, therefore, 

 that the term is used, metaphorically, to signify the low and early 

 embryo-like forms of living things. But it may then be remarked 

 that if speculation be permitted on possible changes in the con- 

 stitution of the atmosphere of this planet, during past geological 

 aeons, it is more probable that the proportion of the carbonic acid 

 has been reduced than that of the oxygen. The prevalence of 

 remains of cold-blooded slow-breathers in palaeozoic and older 

 mezozoic strata has more than once suggested such relation to the 

 ( ambient medium.' I repeat, however, that the sole consequence 

 of vague generalities, or figurative impersonations, propounded to 

 show how transmutation may go on, has been to prejudice calm 

 and sound judgments against any acceptance of, or favour toward, 

 the grounds of a belief in secondary creational law. I have else- 

 where tested the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin as to the mode 

 of transmutation, by reference to the species Chiromys Madagas- 

 cariensis : l I will now apply them, together with Geoffroy's, to 

 another and lower degree of life. 



What spectacle can be more beautiful, striking, and suggestive 

 than that of the inhabitants of the calm expanse of water of an 

 atoll, encircled by its vast ring of coral rock ! Leaving the 

 bright-tinted Chcetodonts, the Scari with adamantine jaws, the 

 Holothurians and other locomotive frequenters of the calcareous 

 basin out of the question, and restricting the test to the species 

 cemented or otherwise confined to its area: we may first ask: — 



Were the elements of the coriaceous and of the softer contrac- 

 tile and secreting tissues of the coral-polype suddenly combined 

 and disposed so as to form the body-wall, inverted gastric-bag, 

 produced tentacles, intermediate laminae, generative plaits, vesi- 

 cles and threads, with outer folds in arrangement and numbers 

 such as to secrete the laminate calcareous polype-cell ? Was the 

 creature, so miraculously constituted, at the same time endowed 

 with generative faculties to multiply and reproduce its kind for 

 all time ; the creative act henceforth and thereafter being dis- 

 pensed with ? Accepting, with the theologian, this view, it must 

 then be applied to each of the more or less closely allied species 

 associated in the same coral workhouse. The origin of such 

 species thus dates back to the beginning of life on the globe. 2 

 The first created coral-polype included, potentially, the germs of 

 its successors throughout all time. 



1 cir". pp. 64-66. 



2 I leave out of the question the subsequent lethal influence of the heavy and con- 

 tinuous rain added to the ocean in order to raise it above the highest mountains, 

 according to the biblical flood. 



