3-32 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



bring them back to greater similitude to the common parent, 

 during which their different conditions of life must have estab- 

 lished physical peculiarities in each, which would finally become 

 hereditary, and these peculiarities must have become multiplied 

 and magnified in each with the continuance of time and genera- 

 tion, and so the diverging lines would become continually more 

 and more separated. It is a divine law stamped on all mat- 

 ter, that nothing is stationary ; change, pei'petual and unceasing 

 change must ever occur, else the work of the Supreme Architect 

 would be at last finished, and when finished, his supervising 

 care would be no longer required. Such a time, we think, can 

 never come, even as to the minutest particle of matter, else it 

 would at last arrive as to all things. If the law of change is 

 ever active ; if destruction and reconstruction are always at 

 work, observation tells us that every reconstruction differs in 

 some respect, however minute, from all that had been before ; 

 the long aggregation of minute changes must in time become very 

 great, how great no one may venture to define. The extrac- 

 tion of single drops of water would at length dry the bed of the 

 ocean ; the removal of single grains of sand would displace a 

 desert in the coui-se of time. If change is ever continuous, who 

 shall fix limits to ti'ansformations which may at length occur. 

 These are considerations which may be well remembered when 

 we approach the present inquiry. 



We all know that there are certain features in the animal 

 economy which are comparatively transitory, and so are easily 

 obliterated or changed, while others are more persistent, and 

 maintain their integrity to a greater or less degree under almost 

 all circumstances or conditions. The nearer alike these pecul- 

 iarities are found to be on all the individuals of a species, we 

 may reasonably conclude the more persistent they are and the 

 less change they have undergone during the course of time. 



How long the physical condition of the earth has rendered it 

 impossible for these two varieties to intermingle, and so keep up 

 an absolute identity, of course it is impossible to conjecture; but, 

 at the shortest, it must have been a very long time. At least 

 the generations must be counted by very many thousands. 



During that time we first notice that a great change has taken 

 place in the size : the western has become much larger than the 

 eastern. That one may have increased in size on the western 

 continent, while the other has grown smaller on the eastern, at- 

 tributable to physical causes, as aliment, climate, or the like. 



