1530 The Zoologist — February, 18G9. 



he evidently regards siicb dead and dying branches as exceptional, in- 

 deed as facts running counter to the general law of evolution ; to me 

 they appear the evidence of a law diametrically opposed to that of 

 evolution, namely, the law of death. Who has not felt, when following 

 a member of his family to the grave, that to this end all his family must 

 come at last ? and when he observes other members of his family 

 growing oblivious, gray, toothless, deaf or blind, does he not regard 

 these ailments as unquestionable symptoms of decay — as certain pre- 

 cursors of approaching death ? 1 feel in my own enfeebled body and 

 mind that 1 am an exemplification of this law; that I am myself one 



of these 



'* Poor human ruins tottering; o'er llie grave." 



Extending the principle from individuals to families, from families 

 to tribes, from tribes to races and nations ; from the dead Guanches, 

 Newfoundlanders, Caribs, Tasmanians, Toltecs, and the dying Austra- 

 lian and Red Indian, to the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, 

 Egyptians, Copts, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, indeed to the 

 ancient world, his must be a singularly obtuse mental vision that 

 cannot perceive all around him the evidence of approaching disso- 

 lution. 



]f I have not entirely misread and misunderstood all that Messrs. 

 Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Lubbock, Wallace, Hooker, have written on 

 this most interesting subject, these philosophers, without exception, 

 regard all living beings as gradually, perhaps imperceptibly, pro- 

 gressing towards a better, higher and more perfect state of both mind 

 and body than that which they at present enjoy. I am compelled'to 

 include the consideration of both mind and body, because both are in- 

 troduced by the authors themselves; and if we admit the hypothesis 

 of evolution at all, we shall find it simply impossible to fix the period 

 at which mind first enters into that mysterious compound the creature 

 man: the words "primordial cell," "monad," " protozoou," "zoon," 

 " man," are but so many terms used by Darwinians to express points in 

 a linear series of genetic beings of which perhaps the "primordial cell" 

 may, in their estimation, be the first, and man the last up to the Now of 

 this earth's history. The series is simply an extension of that chain of 

 beings so familiar to us all, great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, 

 grandfather, father, self; or thus, monad * * whelk * * fish * * 

 monkey * * man. Now most of these able reasoners would, I think, 

 willingly admit that the primordial cell, the first member of the series, 

 had " no soul to be saved," and that the last, the egomet or self of the 



