for the year 1861. xxv 



undergone all the terrible mutations to which the rest of the 

 globe has been exposed, and to establish a remarkable con- 

 formity between the fossil fauna and flora of each geological 

 period in Australia and in Europe, from the first faint glim- 

 mering of life traceable in the graptolites in the silurian 

 slates of our gold-fields, of which Professor M'Coy has iden- 

 tified ten species at least, as common to Scotland, through 

 the secondary formations, as already exemplified by our coal 

 measures, up to the mammpJiferous crag of the tertiary, 

 which preceded but a short time the appearance of the human 

 race upon earth, and which Professor M'Coy was the first to 

 prove, some years since, extended to this country, by the 

 determination of a wombat's jaw, cut out of the solid auri- 

 ferous cement at Dunolly. 



This uniformity of fossils, is to my mind, a matter of no 

 small moment, inasmuch as it tends to confirm the complete- 

 ness of the series of the products of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdom, entombed in the various strata, which have, during 

 successive ages, been deposited on the surface of the globe. 

 For the ingenious author of the new theory of the " Origin 

 of Species," by natural selection (which has recently startled 

 society,) himself admits that if the completeness of the geo- 

 logical record can be established, his doctrine becomes un- 

 tenable. Of that doctrine I will only add, that however 

 true it may be within the limits which the word " species " 

 would, in its ordinary acceptation, indicate, it seems to me, 

 when pushed to such extremes as to be made to assert the 

 derivation — -not merely of fresh " genera," but of the most 

 strongly marked " natural orders " of plants and animals 

 from a very few originals, — scarcely less subversive of belief 

 in a Divine architect of the universe, than the grosser theory 

 of " progressive development," which science has so completely 

 exploded. It would surely be a remarkable encouragement 

 to the fearless pursuit of truth, if the refutation of errors so 



