ORDER CARNASSIER. 445 



The subject is one of legitimate inquiry, though it has hi- 

 therto almost entirely eluded demonstration ; we may still 

 therefore venture to hope, that as we improve in detecting 

 many of the modes of action of nature in her wonderful 

 operations, we may eventually arrive at some partial in- 

 sight into the principles to which she seems subjected, or, 

 in other words, the secondary causes which induce the phe- 

 nomena in question. 



The point more particularly intended in relation to the 

 subject before us is, whether the interfecundity of animals 

 differing generically, in the artificial language of zoologists, 

 has ever produced a third permanent distinct genus, and 

 whether the like interfecundity of animals differing specifi- 

 cally, in the same artificial language, has ever produced a 

 third permanent distinct species, so as in fact to account 

 for the origin of any or many of the creatures around us. 



It seems very difficult to conclude that the race of every 

 genus and species originated in a distinct act of creation, 

 especially as we know their varieties do not ; and however 

 we may amuse ourselves and puzzle others with attempted 

 definitions of genus, species, and variety, we must remem- 

 ber that these distinctions are of man's making, not of 

 nature's, whose works are so interlinked together, as by no 

 means, in all points, to conform, to artificial separation and 

 arrangement. These reflections are not intended to preju- 

 dice the utility of zoological systems in the assistance they 

 afford to our limited faculties ; they merely point to the 

 impossibility of separating, by strong distinct lines of de- 

 markation, the varied creatures of the earth, which appear 

 to us to be interlaced and linked together like the meshes 

 of a piece of network, though not like it in regard to the 

 regularity of the points of contact. 



If this position be correct, if, in fact, one species of a 

 given group of animals be found to approximate to the phy- 

 sical characters of another group, on the one hand, and a 



2 H 2 



