The Zoologist— February, 18G7. 587 



Containing two, and the latter three of the five sub-divisions of which 

 each of the higher groups is composed. 



" We cannot here explain the doctrine oi analogy, — which is wholly 

 distinct from affinity, — but we will give an instance of it. The hedge 

 sparrow in the Sylviadaj represents the house sparrow in the 

 Fringillidae ; that is, the one bears the same relation to the Sylviadas 

 that the other does to the Fringillidas, and hence they are said to bear 

 an analogy to each other. The whole zoological series, before 

 arranged in a simple chain, according to this system revolves in an 

 almost infinite number of circles around man, from whom they may 

 be said to degrade on all sides." So says a disciple of Macleay. 



An opponent of his system writes as follows: — "In Natural 

 History we have always good reason for suspecting methods, and 

 still more for suspecting principles. The doctrine of types, if I 

 compi-ehend it aright, is one of those suspicious principles, being 

 evidently a shoot from Plato's wild theory of pre-existent ideas, or 

 the archetypes of all things, and more directly borrowed from the 

 atheistic system of Robinet. His doctrine bears that Nature's grand 

 aim was to make man, and being incapable of doing so at once, under- 

 took an apprenticeship (apprentisage) of experiments, by making 

 various types of his several organs ; such as the hand-shaped roots of 

 some of the Orchis family, the brain-stone coral, and the stink-horn 

 {Phallus fcelidus), of many of which he gives figures. "A stone," he 

 says, " an oak, a horse, a monkey, a man, are only graduated variations 

 of a prototype which has begun to be realized by the least possible ele- 

 ments. A stone, an oak, a horse, are not men, but they can be re- 

 garded as types, more or less conformable to the same primitive 

 design, and they are all the product of the same idea, more or less 

 developed." 



In other words, we are expected, upon this principle, to dismiss the 

 conviction (which seems to me an inevitable one) that every object in 

 Nature is a distinct and independent creation of an omnipotent 

 Creator, and accept in its stead the belief that an inferior being is 

 capable of transforming itself to a superior one, " by development," 

 independently of divine agency ! 



The idea that in Nature there is a chain of succession, and that 

 between every alternate species there is one which forms a connecting 

 link between diem, is no doubt a beautiful one, but it is at the same 

 time only speculative, and an examination of facts shows us that the 

 chain cannot be continued unbroken. In this respect, therefore, the 



