Miscellanea. 859 
American Indian, or as this does from the hair of the European. Examined 
under a high magnifying power, and with care, the difference in the quali- 
ties of all these kinds of hair, whether of the sheep or of man, colour apart, 
appear to be merely in degree. The wool of the sheep and its hair are 
both solid,—both exhibit the same transverse markings, the one strongly, 
the other feebly ; and so of their other properties. ‘The same may he said 
of the hair of the several varieties of the human race. And keeping to the 
analogy, with which all experience is in accordance, we may confidently 
conclude, that provident Nature has not been less careful of man than of the 
brute, and what is peculiar in the hair of each variety of the human race, as 
in the colour of the skin of each, is to be viewed rather as an excellence, 
connected with climate, and the effect of the adapting power of climate, 
than in any instance as a deformity or an unseemly defect. 
Lesketa How, AmBiesIDeE, 
6th March, 1852. 
Sir Charles Lyell on Progressive Geological Development. 
Sir Charles Lyell in a lecture read at Ipswich a short time ago, on Pro- 
gressive Development, concluded by explaining the theory which he had 
advocated in his works, in opposition to that of progressive development. 
He believed that there had been a constant going out and coming in of 
species, and a continual change going on in the position of land and sea, 
accompanied by great fluctuation in climate; that there had been a constant 
adaptation of the vegetable and animal creations to these new geographical 
and climatal conditions. At the present moment we found contemporane- 
ously a marsupial fauna in Australia, and mammalia of a different and 
higher grade in Asia and Europe; we also found birds without mammalia 
in New Zealand, reptiles without land quadrupeds in the Galapagos Archi- 
pelago, andland quadrupeds without reptiles in Greenland. In like man- 
ner, in successive geological eras, certain classes, such as the reptiles, may 
have predominated over other vertebrata throughout wide areas; but there 
is no evidence that the adaptation of the fauna, as above explained, had been 
governed by any law of progressive development. In those classes of the 
invertebrata which were best known, and fully represented in a fossil state 
at all geological periods, the oldest or Silurian fauna was as highly developed 
as the corresponding fauna in the recent seas. Our ignorance of the in- 
habitants of the ancient lands was the chiefcause of our scanty acquaintance 
with the highly-organized beings of remote epochs.—(Literary Gazeite, 
No. 1824, p. 17.) 
