DEFICIENCY OF INTERMEDIATE FORMS. 295 
with the didactyles and multidactyles, we should still not 
deem the horse a special miraculous creation, but incon- 
trovertibly deduce his true kinship with the other ungu- 
lata. This pure deduction is not requisite, as the proge- 
nitors of the horse are present in conspicuous remains ; 
and, as we have already seen, elicited in R. Owen, half 
a century ago, the conviction of a direct metamorphosis 
of the tridactyle genera into the unidactyle. Our acquaint- 
ance with the tridactyle horses was a lucky chance ; they 
were indigenous in those parts of Europe which have 
been most diligently laid bare and explored in behalf cf 
Paleontology. 
But that our museums are still destitute of the fossil 
progenitors of man, is not more strange than the defi- 
ciency, hitherto existing, of intermediate forms, which, 
for example, would conclusively decide the position of 
the Dinotherium in the system. We willalso refer again 
to the elephants, who, with their nearest ally, the 
mastodon, occupy towards the other Pachydermata a 
position elucidated by no fossils, and far more isolated 
than that of man to the apes. We hope herewith to 
have shown that the argument that, by peculiarities not 
bridged over,—by upright gait, comparative hairlessness, 
chin, preponderance of brain, &c.,—man betrays a posi- 
tion absolutely apart, cannot be admitted by comparative 
anatomy and paleontology. The demand, therefore, that 
the adherents of the doctrine of Descent should produce 
the intermediate forms which at one time necessarily 
existed, can be made only by dilettantes to whom the 
province of life, as a whole, has remained a sealed book. 
As we observed before, the bodily nature of man is 
sometimes ceded to natural inquiry as a means of more 
