50 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



" The preceding laws may be considered as established on some- 

 thing like a solid basis : that which follows can however only be 

 admitted with great restrictions." 



Law 5. " The faunas of the most ancient formations are made up of 

 the less perfectly organized animals, and the degree of perfection 

 increases as we approach the more recent epochs.' 



" This is a law which has long been considered as demonstrated, 

 and it has served as a point of departure for many theoretical 

 views. A more strict and rigorous analysis has however of late years 

 considerably shaken it, and we are now in a condition to affirm that 

 it has at least been greatly exaggerated. Its importance both in 

 itself and with reference to the consequences deduced from it, re- 

 quires that it should be discussed at some length." — Page 75. 



The author, after some further remarks, proceeds to state that 

 those who attribute the present state of organization at the surface of 

 the globe to a gradual perfecting of the lower forms of organization 

 during the lapse of a series of ages, who believe in spontaneous ge- 

 neration, and who admit the possibility that species may pass from 

 one form to another by the varying influence of external agents and 

 a change in the media in which they live, readily embrace a view 

 which seems to recall in the actual monuments of past ages the 

 different phases of this organic development. 



" It is then not to be wondered at, if, under the influence of this 

 accordance, the idea of the gradual advance of animal organization 

 towards perfection has struck deep root, and that in the infancy of 

 palgeontology men have hastened to group around it the facts with 

 which they became acquainted. But now, when accurate observa- 

 tions are more multiplied, if we endeavour calmly and conscien- 

 tiously to discuss these theories without allowing ourselves to be 

 dazzled by their brilliancy, v/e shall find ourselves obliged to strip 

 them of almost all their value as generalizations and reduce them to 

 very scanty proportions. It will soon appear that the law as ex- 

 pressed above can only give a false and incomplete idea of the facts 

 which it distorts or exaggerates. 



" To demonstrate this, we must first of all obtain accurate notions 

 concerning those circumstances and conditions which induce us to 

 consider one kind of organization as superior to another ; we must 

 also satisfy ourselves as to the way in which animals now living pre- 

 sent themselves under this point of view. 



^' The idea of the gradual advance of organized beings towards per- 

 fection is connected more or less with the theory of a scale of beings ; 

 that is, with the opinion that all animals together form a series, of 

 which man is the crowning point, and that in this series each species 

 is less perfect than that which precedes it, and more perfect than 

 that which succeeds it, thus forming as it were a link of an un- 

 broken chain. This idea of a scale of beings is based on the evi- 

 dent fact that there are different degrees of perfection (or compli- 

 cation of organization) in the animal kingdom; it is consequently 



