320 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



actually find them, and as fossil osteology seems to evince 

 they have ever been. 



A question connected with the subject before us has often 

 been discussed by naturalists, traces of which are to be 

 found in the most remote antiquity. It has been conjec- 

 tured that the Creator produced only the germs of existing 

 beings, and that these have been conformed by surrounding 

 influences, so as to produce the result we see before us. 

 The development of these germs, it is said, is proportioned 

 to the more or less favourable state of these influences, and 

 animals of the most simple organization, as the Polypes? 

 are in fact nearer the immediate work of the Creator than 

 those less imperfect, as Man and the Mammalia. The 

 latter are the production of secondary causes, and could not 

 have arrived at their present state of perfection and com- 

 plication, but by having passed through the intermediate 

 conditions between them and the most simple beings. 



Such an hypothesis may at least have one word in its 

 favour. Instead of limiting the power of Omnipotence, it 

 seems rather to place it in that point of view in which we 

 ought to regard it, that is, as simple in its means, immense 

 in its views, and infinite in its results. The principal, 

 indeed the only rational support of this hypothesis, is to be 

 found in the variations we observe, especially in the canine 

 race, and very generally in all others, which we can only at- 

 tribute to secondary and accidental causes. 



It is not our business to state an hypothesis merely for 

 the purpose of refuting it, but as this has been suggested 

 to account for the phenomenon under consideration, it may 

 not be improper to advert to it. Such a system of creation, 

 however, loses much of its probability, when it is consi- 

 dered that the tendency to variety seems almost exclusively 

 confined to the more perfect animals, or at least is observed 

 to prevail less as we descend in the scale of organization. 



The intellectual, moral, or invisible works of the Creator 



