g2 
different constitutions. Were we to remove the whole flora and 
fauna of a country to a distant region, or, what comes to 
the same thing, change the external conditions of that flora 
and fauna, as to climate, physical influences, natural enemies, or 
other causes of destruction, means of protection, &c., we should 
now be taught to expect that some of the individual races would 
at once perish; others, more or less affected, might continue 
through several generations, but with decreasing vigour, and, in 
the course of years or ages, gradually die out, to be replaced by 
more vigorous neighbours or invaders ; others again might see 
amongst their numerous and ever-varying offspring some few 
slightly modified, so as to be better suited for the new order of 
things ; and experience has repeatedly shown that the change 
once begun may go on increasing through successive generations 
and a permanent representative species is formed, and some few 
races may find themselves quite as happy and vigorous under 
their new circumstances as under the old, and may go on as 
before, unchanged and unchanging. 
Taking into consideration the new lights that have been thrown 
upon these subjects by the above investigations and by the nume- 
rous observations called forth by the development of the great Dar- 
winian theories, amongst which I mayinclude afew points adverted 
to in a paper on Cassia which I laid before you last year, it appears 
to me that in plants, at least, we may almost watch, as it were, 
the process of specific change actually going on, or at least we 
may observe different races now living in different stages of 
progress, from the slight local variation to the distinct species and 
genus. As a first step we may take, for instance, those races 
which are regarded by the majority of botanists as very variable 
species, such as Rudus fruticosus, Rosa canina, Zornia diphylla, 
Cassia mimosoides, &c.: we shall find in each some one form, 
which we call typical, generally prevalent over the greater part 
of the area of the race, whilst others more or less aberrant are. 
more or less restricted to particular localities, the same varieties 
not occurring in disconnected stations with precisely the same 
combinations of character; and in the same proportions local 
and representative varieties and sub-species are being formed, but 
have not yet obtained sufficient advantages to prevent their being 
kept in check by their inter-communication (and probable cross- 
breeding) with their more robust type. The British rubologist 
or rhodologist transported to the south of France or to Hungary 
will still find one, or perhaps two or three, forms of bramble and 
dog-rose with which he is familiar; but if he wishes to dis- 
criminate the thirty or forty varieties or sub-species upon 
which he had spent so much labour and acuteness at home, 
he will find that he must recommence with a series of forms and 
combinations of characters quite new to him. ‘The species is 
still the same; the varieties are changed. As examples of what 
we may call a second stage in the formation of species, we may 
adduce such plants as Pelargonium australe or grossularoides and 
Nicotiana suaveolens or angustifolia, to which I alluded in the 
above-mentioned paper on Cassia. Here we have one race, of 
no higher than specific grade in the ordinary acceptance of the 
term, inhabiting two countries which have long been widely dis- 
severed (in the one case South Africa and Australia, in the other 
Chili and Australia), which, if originally introduced by accident 
from one country to the other, have been so at a time so remote 
as thoroughly to have acquired an indigenous character in both ; 
in both are they widely spread and highly diversified, but 
amongst all their varieties one form only is identical in the two 
countries (Pelargonium australe, var, erodiodes, and P. grossula- 
rioides, var. anceps; Nicotiana suaveolens, var. angustifolia, and LV. 
angustifolia, var. acuminata), and that so comparatively a rare 
one that it may be regarded as being in the course of extinction ; 
whilst all other varieties, some of them very numerous in indivi- 
duals over extended areas, and all connected by nice gradations, 
diverge nevertheless in the two countries in different directions 
and with different combinations of characters, no two of them 
growing in the two countries being at all connected but through 
the medium of that one which is still common to both. When 
that shall haye expired the distinct species may be considered as 
established. A still further advance in specific change is exem- 
plified in Cassia itself, in which I have shown that no less than 
eight or nine different modifications of type, sectional and sub- 
sectional, are common to South America, tropical Africa, and 
Australia, but without any specific or, at least, sub-specific iden- 
tity, except perhaps in a few cases where a more modern inter- 
change may be presumed. The original common specific types 
are extinct, the species have risen into sections. Common types 
of a still higher order have disappeared in the case of Proteacez, 
NATURE 
[Fune 2, 1870 
an order so perfectly natural and so clearly defined that we cannot 
refrain from speculating on the community of origin of the 
African and of the Australian races, both exceedingly numerous 
and reducible to definite groups—large and small well-marked 
genera in both countries, and yet not a single genus common to 
the two ; not only the species, but the genera themselves, have 
become geographical. As in the varieties of Pelargonium and 
Nicotiana, so in that of the species of Cassia and of the genera 
of Proteacex, it is not to be denied that precisely similar 
modifications of character are observed in the two countries ; 
but these modifications are differently combined, the changes in 
the organs are differently correlated. In Asiatico-African Cha- 
macristes a tendency to a particular change in the venation of 
the leaflet is accompanied by a certain change in the petiolar 
gland ; in America the same change in the gland is correlated 
with a different alteration in the venation. In Australian Pro- 
teaceze the glands of the torus are constantly deficient, with a 
certain inflorescence (cones with imbricate-scales), which is always 
accompanied by them in Africa. 
In selecting the above instances for illustration of what we 
may, without much strain upon the imagination, suppose to be 
cases of progressive change in races, it is not that they are iso- 
lated cases or exceptionally appropriate ; for innumerable similar 
ones might be adduced. In the course of the detailed examina- 
tion I have had successively to make of the floras of Europe, 
N.W. America, tropical America, tropical Africa, China, and 
Australia, I have everywhere observed that community of general 
type, in regions now dissevered, is, when once varied, accom- 
panied by more or less of divergence in more special characters 
in different directions in the different countries. 
G, BENTHAM 
SURFACE-OCEANIC LIFE 
IN the waiting-room at the Admiralty is a drawing 12 feet by 
8 feet, which is attracting the attention of numerous scientific 
and naval men, who thoroughly appreciate the novel and com- 
plete manner in which the several groups of interesting marine 
life have been arranged, and the system and regularity upon 
which the arrangement has been carried out, and we may also 
add, for the benefit of the curious, that the beauty and colour of 
these grotesque forms would exceed the imagination of Gustave 
Doré. The work was entirely executed in H.M.S. Rodney, 
on her passage from China to England during the last six 
months, and extends over the China Sea, Indian and Atlantic 
Oceans. The subject of surface-oceanic life is particularly accept- 
able at the present time, as Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, 
and Professor Wyville Thomson were last season engaged in 
examining the deep-sea life of the neighbouring ocean, and are 
likely to extend their investigations into the Bay of Biscay and 
Mediterranean Sea during the summer. These deep sea explo- 
rations should be energetically pursued, and we may earnestly 
hope that it- will not be long before an honest rivalry is 
maintained in the Atlantic and European seas, and that other 
oceans and parts of the world may be dipped into by voyagers, 
for contributions to this useful branch of science. 
Those who only know the sea under the aspect which it 
usually presents round our own coasts will hardly be acquainted 
with the fact that the surface of the ocean forms a world in 
itself, inhabited by myriads of strange and delicate creatures, as 
distinct in its conditions from the shore world as from the inha- 
bitants of the dark mysterious depths whose oozy plain, shut 
off from_the day by three miles’ thickness of water, is tenanted 
by the lingering and stunted refugees of a world of animals now 
for the most part extinct. The creatures which inhabit the surface 
of the ocean are very many of them born and bred there ; cthers, 
on the contrary, have left their parents at a very early age, 
being carried away from the shore by surface currents and 
drifted out to sea, there to pass through ever-changing forms, 
until the time comes for their return to shallower places and a life 
of grovelling on the ground. Although this picture contains 
more than six hundred drawings of marine animals, it does not 
represent much more than one-third of the actual labour incurred, 
duplicate and fac-simile drawings of all the creatures having 
been originally made. ‘The author of this picture, Mr. Francis 
Ingram Palmer, has been employed surveying the coasts of 
Japan and China, and it was on his passage home that he 
devoted his attention to this subject, 
