I860.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 



either generally and systemati- 

 cally, or specially from embryonic 

 types, appears to have progressed, 

 independently of any apparent ex- 

 ternal causes, and in accordance 

 with the operation of some inde- 

 pendant internal law, except in 

 so far as there is a necessary reci- 

 procal relation between the laws 

 of development of the organic 

 and inorganic world, which could 

 only be definitely expressed if 

 we knew the nature of the power 

 or force which gives rise to new 

 organisms. 



In commenting on the above, Mr. Blanford remarked that 

 although the hypothesis of a cooling globe and an universal equable 

 temperature in early geologic times had been rejected by Sir Charles 

 Lyell and some other eminent authorities, there were many important 

 facts, such as the existence of a coal flora within the Arctic regions 

 in a great measure identical with that of the temperate zone, and the 

 wide distribution of generic and specific types in Palceozoic times, 

 which gave much probability to the hypothesis upon which Dr. 

 Bronn's theoretical conclusions were based. 



These views were stated necessarily at much disadvantage before 

 the Society, as time would not permit of even an abstract of Dr. 

 Bronn's proofs of the laws above enunciated, by a review of the 

 geologic record, which could be the only test of their truth or 

 falsity. "With respect to the third of Dr. Bronn's secondary laws, 

 viz. that new stations were frequently isolated, and consequently that 

 their faunas and floras were necessarily of independent origin, it 

 appeared to Mr. Blanford that both the fact and inference were 

 pure assumption, and neither proved by the author in the subsequent 

 part of his work, nor indeed very capable of historic proof. Many 

 of the now isolated stations, such as the islands of Polynesia, 

 had been shewn to be very probably mere remnants of former widely 

 extended stations ; (in the case cited, by Dr. Hooker on botanic 



