254 EXISTING INDIAN ELEPHANT. 



indicate that the older Elephants of Europe, such as E. meri- 

 dionalis and E. antiquus, were not the stocks from which the 

 later species E. primigenius and E. Africanus sprung, and 

 that we must look elsewhere for their origin. The nearest 

 affinity, and that a very close one, of the European E. meri- 

 dionalis is with the Miocene E. (Loxocl.) planifrons of India ; 

 and of E. primigenius with the existing Indian species. 

 Another reflection is equally strong in my mind, that the 

 means which have been adduced to explain the origin of 

 species by ' Natural Selection,' or a process of variation from 

 external influences, are inadequate to account for the phe- 

 nomena. The law of Phyllotaxis, which governs the evolu- 

 tion of leaves around the axis of a plant, is nearly as constant 

 in its manifestation as any of the physical laws connected 

 with the material world. Each instance, however different 

 from another, can be shown to be a term of some series of 

 continued fractions. When this is coupled with the geo- 

 metrical law governing the evolution of form, so manifest in 

 some departments of the animal kingdom, e.g. the spiral 

 shells of the Mollusca, it is difficult to believe that there is 

 not in nature a deeper seated and innate principle, to the 

 operation of which ' Natural Selection ' is merely an adjunct. 

 The whole range of the Mammalia, fossil and recent, cannot 

 furnish a species which has had a wider geographical distri- 

 bution, and at the same time passed through a longer term 

 of time, and through more extreme changes of climatal 

 conditions, than the Mammoth. If species are so unstable, 

 and so susceptible of mutation through such influences, why 

 does that extinct form stand out so signally a monument of 

 stability ? By his admirable researches and earnest writings, 

 Darwin has, beyond all his cotemporaries, given an impulse 

 to the philosophical investigation of the most backward and 

 obscure branch of the Biological Sciences of his day ; he has 

 laid the foundations of a great edifice ; but he need not be 

 surprised if, in the progress of erection, the superstructure 

 is altered by his successors, like the Duomo of Milan, from 

 the Roman to a different style of architecture. 



§ 9. Unity or Plurality op Species in the existing 

 Asiatic Elephants. 



This question has an important bearing on that of the 

 fossil species which we have just discussed. It is averred, 

 that from the time of Cuvier up to the present day, zoologists 

 have been commonly in error in regarding the Elephants of 

 Eastern Asia as all belonging to one species, E. Indians ; 

 that there are two well marked forms confounded under this 

 name, the one limited to Continental India, the other insular, 



