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SUPPLEMENTARY' SECTION. 



degradation as well as elevation. I can conceive nothing more unreason* 

 able than the statement sometimes made that it is illogical or even absurd 

 to suppose that highly organized beings could have been produced except 

 by derivation from previously existing organisms. This is begging the 

 whole question at issue, depriving science of a noble department of inquiry 

 on which it has as yet barely entered, and anticipating by unwarranted 

 assertions conclusions which may perhaps suddenly dawn upon us through 

 the inspiration of some groat intellect, or may for generations to come 

 baffle the united exertions of all the earnest promoters of natural sc'enoe. 

 Our present attitude should not be that of dogmatists, but that of patient 

 workers content to labour for a harvest of grand generalizations which may 

 not come till we have passed away, but which, if we are earnest and true 

 to nature and its Creator, may reward even some of ua. 



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