28 THE REV. CANON E. B. GIEDLESTONE, M.A., ON 



finality, and of nniversality, b'ot that is all. These laws are 

 demonstrated as trne, or as being in harmony with the 

 universal truth of tilings, by tests and by discoveries made 

 on the strength of them. Sometimes the intangible can be 

 turned into the tangible, and so demonstrated, as in the case 

 of oxygen. If ether could be captured and condensed into 

 (say) argon, and if argon coukl be exliibited in a flame or a 

 sound, we should acknowledge these discoveries to have 

 received the topstone of demonstration. 



I am inclined to inquire, in passing, whether evolution 

 has reached this stage. Is it final ? Is it a law ? or is it an 

 ad interim speculation, helpful and suggestive, and calcu- 

 lated to lead up to something Avhicli may have more of 

 finality about it ? I venture to think that the latter is the 

 true view. 



Accidental variations in animals of the same kind tend to 

 aid or hinder the struggle for life and to reproduce them- 

 selves in the next generation. To advance from this 

 suggestive speculation to the lijqDothesis that all sub-species, 

 all species, and all genera of the animal world miglit, in the 

 course of untold ages, have sprung from one beginning, 

 — well, it would take a good deal of persuasion. To suggest 

 further that the same theory may be argued by analogy in 

 the case of the vegetable world, and that having got so far 

 we may safely take the next step and amalgamate these two 

 worlds into one, as being analogous in their course and 

 therefore identical in their beginning ; this is a splendid 

 conception, and betrays a brilliant imagination, and provides 

 a wide scope for investigation. Ordinary people, however, 

 cannot but regret that a few experimental illustrations of 

 the automatic development not only of species but of genera 

 should not be forthcoming. 



We all recognise the fact of gradation, though Ave cannot 

 all accept the theory of automatic evolution based on 

 accidental and inherited varieties. We may believe in an 

 ever advancing stream of life embodied at certain stages in 

 new species and even in new genera, but while some regard 

 the embodied types as lineal though modified descendants of 

 heterogeneous predecessors, others decline to do so without 

 more definite proof than is forthcoming at present.* I can 

 imagine a theory which would regard each type as a terminus 



* See Professor Huxley's paper in Nature, November, 1894. 



