Ch. XXXIV.] 



TKANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 



S57 



quantity and quality of their food ; tliey 

 plants and ai 



meet 



new 



them with nutriment 



-pment 



The nature^ also^ of each locality is in itself fluctuating ; so 



animals 



invariable^ the habits and organisation of species would be 

 modified by the influence of local revolutions. 



JSToWj if the first of these principles^ the tendency to pro- 

 gressive development^ were left to exert itself with perfect 

 freedom^ it would give rise^ says Lamarck^ in the course of 

 ages^ to a graduated scale of beings where the most insensible 



Sim 



traced from the 

 from the humblest to the most 



degree of intelligence. 



But, in consequence of the perpetual 

 interference of the external causes before mentioned this 

 regular order is greatly interfered with, and an approxi- 

 mation only to such a state of things is exhibited by the 



some 



by unfavourable, and that of others accelerated by favourable, 

 combinations of circumstances. Hence, all kinds of anomalies 

 interrupt tlie continuity of the plan; and chasms, into which 

 whole genera or families might be inserted, are seen to sepa- 

 rate the nearest existing portions of the series. 



Lamarck's theory of the transformation of the orang-outang 

 into the human speaes.— Such is the machinery of the La- 



m 



m 



o± mechanism, unless it is exhibited in action, so that we. 

 may see in what manner it can work out, under the author's 

 guidance, all the extraordinary effects which we behold in the 

 present state of the animate creation. "Without attempting 

 to follow the author through the entire process by which. 



transformed 



small 



once to the last grand step in the progressive scheme, bj 



rumanous animals 



monad 

 'man. 

 had 



reached the highest state of perfection, lost, by constraint of 



VOL. II. 



s 



