SPECIES. 133 



peared in order to justify this hypothesis, and everything seems 

 to show that since that epoch the height of the genus homo 

 has not much altered, whilst the size of the different genera of 

 ferines, ruminants, and pachyderms has positively varied. 



Recapitulation. Since we have found that man is com- 

 parable in all points to animals, we ought to seek for him and 

 for them a common origin, and the difficulty of admitting an 

 initial miracle has led us to the idea of evolution. If in the 

 science of observation it is permitted to refer to general ideas, 

 assuredly it is so in this case ; philosophy commences where 

 science ends, and it belongs to it to give us an explanation of 

 the matter ; but we must wait for the future for a true positive 

 solution of the problem, perhaps from advanced geology, per- 

 haps from experiments. The genius of man has no bounds, 

 who can say to what it may reach ? who knows whether, like a 

 new Prometheus,* a creator in his turn, he may not one day 

 breathe life into some new species, which will suddenly appear 

 from his laboratories ? 



of their ideas. All the fossil plants that we know are, without exception, 

 extremely wretched in comparison with the gigantic conifers and dicotyledons 

 in the forests of the old and new world. 



* [If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, 

 is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world 

 will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded 

 such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, 

 something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in 

 quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the conse- 

 quences of his rashness ? We are really sorry, however, to see science per- 

 verted to a pet idea, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of 

 " bad anatomy and worse theology," as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake 

 of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spon- 

 taneous generation, a first germ with which to start a primordial anatomical 

 element, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues in what manner we 

 leave it to our readers to determine that, from this germ there have, in time, 

 sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us 

 how this first germ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken 

 for granted. We cannot take it for granted however ; and until we have it 

 satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on 

 thinking and believing as we have done before. EDITOE.] 



