68 J. W. SLATER, ESQ., F.C.S., F.E.S., ON 



able to verify it.* Perhaps Mr. Slater will say if I am right 

 or not. If I am right in this view, the Darwinian advocate would 

 perhaps say that the position of the month in the shark was only 

 a survival of its progenitors of the Old Red Sandstone order. 

 Well, that is just one point out of many, but I confess I do not 

 see how it is possible to answer some of the arguments that Mr. 

 Slater has adduced. 



Now, as regards the survival of the fittest — that is to say, the 

 fittest for its environment; — it will occur to one at once, that one 

 cannot see, on that hypothesis, why there should have been any 

 inhabitant of the ocean of a higher type than, say, the sharks or 

 Placoid or Ganoid fishes. What is the difference in the environ- 

 ment in the ocean of the present day and that of the Tertiary 

 time ; or in the character of the ocean now and in the Silurian 

 time ? I think it would be very difficult for geologists to assert 

 that there was any difference whatever in the oceanic waters of 

 those ancient geological periods and those of the present day, and 

 we may say of those ancient times that the creatures of those 

 periods were fully adapted to their environment, and there is no 

 cause, as far as I can see, why they should have been modified into 

 other forms in consequence of any change in the environment. 

 The same argument might be adduced in reference to many laud 

 animals. Why should there have been any animal higher than, 

 say, the primitive earliest marsnpial ? To all intents and pur- 

 poses the surface of the ocean, the air, climate and productions, 

 were as suitable to the animals of those days as they are now. 

 What I mean to assert is, there is no physical reason, as far as one 

 can see, why there should have been any modification in the 

 animal structures to suit any altered conditions of the surface of 

 the land or the atmosphere or waters of the ocean. We might 

 take up many points of this inquiry, and I think we should pro- 

 bably find that we were just as much in the dark as regards the 

 higher races of animals and plants, as time went on, as we were 

 at the beginning. 



It seems to me to be almost unreasonable for anyone to assert 

 that the present x*aces of animals and plants can have come into 

 existence by any natural process without the superintending, 



* Professor Seeley refors to this subject in his Manual of Geology 

 part I, p. 501. 



