442 ON THE METHOD OF PALEONTOLOGY 



ning, " Mr. Huxley contrasts the two as opposite dogmas.'' Dr 

 Falconer here takes two parts of the same argument, thrusts them 

 into opposition, and is then excessively puzzled to discover that 

 he can find no "opposition or incompatibility" between them. 

 However glad I may be to have Dr. Falconer's testimony to the 

 connexion of the two parts of my argument, even malgr^ hii, I think 

 he would have done well to have read the passage twice before 

 entangling himself in it. 



Dr. Falconer writes at p. 490 : — 



" This invariable coincidence may be, as has been shown above, 

 either empirical or necessary. Cuvier, like a true interpreter of nature, 

 employed both indifferently in his restorations, accordingly as they 

 were presented to him, and professed it. This important fact is 

 nozvhere recognized by Mr. Huxley, who argues the case throughout 

 as if Cuvier had excluded the empirical and admitted only of 

 necessary correlations." 



This is in the teeth of the passage of my abstract, which 

 Dr. Falconer himself quotes at p. 487 : " And if it were necessary to 

 appeal to any authority save facts and reason, our first witness would 

 be Cuvier himself, who in a very remarkable passage, two or three 

 pages further on (' Discours,' pp. 184, 185), implicitly surrenders his 

 own principle." Surely this amount of careless incorrectness is hardly 

 venial. Surely I may quote to Dr. Falconer his own courteous words, 

 " rarely in the history of science has confident assertion been put 

 forward in so grave a case upon a more erroneous and unsubstantial 

 foundation.'' 



Just after reproaching me at p. 482, as I conceive unjustifiably, 

 with affirming a case to be one of Cuvier's selection, which is not so. 

 Dr. Falconer falls into the precise error which he wrongfully 

 attributes to me. 



" Let us now take the case as put by Mr. Huxley, and suppose 

 that the Brown and White Bears were only met with in the fossil 

 state ; but with the proviso of the other living species being known to 

 us as at present." 



What I say is, " If Bears were only known to us in the fossil 

 state.'' Dr. Falconer's proviso, in fact, is the precise nullification of 

 my argument, and yet he still ventures to quote it as mine. So again 

 at p. 483, after discussing the Bear question, Dr; Falconer states,. 

 " Mr. Huxley next takes in hand the opposite case of the Ungulate 

 Herbivora, as put by Cuvier." Dr. Falconer's assertion is inaccurate ; 

 I do not next take in hand the Ungulate Herbivora ; any one who will 

 read my abstract may see that the discussion as to the Bears comes 



