PRIMARY STRATIFIED ROCKS. 51 



gin of existing organizations, either to an eternal succession 

 of the same species, or to the formation of more recent from 

 more ancient species, by successive developments, without 

 the interposition of direct and repeated acts of creation ; and ^ 

 thus, to deny the existence of any first term, in the infinite 

 series of successions which this hypothesis assumes. Against ^ 

 this theory, no decisive evidence has been accessible, until 

 the modern discoveries of geology had established two con- 

 clusions of the highest value in relation to this long disputed 

 question : the first proving, that existing species have had 

 a beginning ; and this at a period comparatively recent in 

 the physical history of our globe : the second showing that 

 they were preceded by several other systems of animal and 

 vegetable life, respecting each of which it may no less be 

 proved, that there was a time when their existence had not 

 commenced ; and that to these more ancient systems also, 

 the doctrine of eternal succession both retrospective and 

 prospective, is equally inapplicable.* 



Having this evidence both of the beginning and end of 

 several systems of organic life, each affording internal proof 

 of the "^repeated exercise of creative design, and wisdom, 

 and power, we are at length conducted back to a period 

 anterior to the earliest of these systems ; a period in which 



* Mr. Lyell, in the first four chapters of the second volume of his Prin- 

 ciples of Gcolojry, has very ably and candidly examined tlie arguments that 

 have bepn advanced in support of the doctrine of transmutation of species, 

 and arrives at the conclusion, — " that species have a real existence in nature, 

 and that each was endowed, at the time of its creation, with the attributes 

 and organization by which it is now distitiguished." 



Mr. Do la Beche also says (Geological Researches, 1S34, p. 239, 1st, edit. 

 8vo.) " There can be no doubt that many plants can adapt themselves to 

 altered conditions, and many animals accommodate tliemselves to different 

 climates ; but when we view the subject generally, and allow full importance 

 £0 numerous exceptions, terrestrial plants and animals seem intended to fill 

 the situations they occupy, as these were fitted for them ; they appear created 

 as the conditions arose, the latter not causing a modification in prevlousU* 

 eristing forms productive of new species." 



