REVIEWS—ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 399 
is, that they are perfectly consistent with an array of facts which are utterly in- 
consistent with and fatal to, any other hypothesis of progressive modification, 
which has yet been advanced. Itis one remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Darwin’s 
hypothesis that it involves no necessary progression or incessant modification, 
and that it is perfectly consistent with the persistence for any length of time of 
@ given primitive stock, contemporaneously with its modifications. To return 
to the case of the domestic breeds of pigeons, for example; you have the Dove- 
cot pigeon, which closely resembles the Rock pigeon, from which they all 
started, existing at the same time with the others. And if species are developed 
in the same way in nature, a primitive stock and its modifications may, occa- 
sionally, all find the conditions fitted for their existence; and though they come 
into competition, to a certain extent, with one another, the derivative species 
may not necessarily extirpate the primitive one, or vice versd. 
Now paleontology shows us many facts which are perfectly harmonious with 
these observed effects of the process by which Mr. Darwin supposes species to 
have originated, but which appear to me to be totally inconsistent with any 
other hypothesis which has been proposed. There are some groups of animals 
and plants, in the fossil world, which have been said to belong to “persistent 
types,” because they have persisted, with very little change indeed, through a 
very great range of time, while everything about them has changed largely. 
There are families of fishes whose type of construction has persisted all the way 
from the carboniferous rock right up to the cretaceous; and others which have 
lasted through almost the whole range of the secondary rocks, and from the lias 
to the older tertiaries. Itis something stupendous this—to consider a genus 
lasting without essential modifications through all this enormous lapse of time 
while almost everything else was changed and modified.” 
- Mr. Huxley calls it paltermg with words to say of the succession of 
‘organisms revealed by an examination of the earth’s strata, that they 
were so created, meaning that this is all we know of their origin. We 
confess to a different feeling. There may be a grand scheme of suc- 
cessive creations, suited to changes, taking place in the physical con- 
dition of the globe, as well as a scheme of successive changes in mode 
and degree of development of organs derived from the primitive living 
element. Which of these schemes is most conformable to known 
facts must be determined by observation, but if the origin of life be 
at all referred to a direct exertion of the will of a supreme intelligence, 
we cannot see that the former scheme is less antecedently probable 
than the latter ; and even if it be referred to the operation of chemical 
laws, laws of nature do not imply any powers inherent in matter, but 
are only our expressions of the observed uniformity of a class or re- 
sults from causes—and really only direct our attention to the mode of 
operation of the great first cause of all things. Mr. Huxley thus de- 
scribes an objection to Darwin’s hypothesis which we think he hardly 
