2 2 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



discover nothing. The most it can say is that it knows of nothing 

 else that will account for it. 



Unquestionably, the conditions and combinations were vastly 

 different in various periods of the world's history, producing greatly 

 different results, but we have not a shadow of a reason for supposing 

 that the laws of Nature were different. It is certain knowledge that 

 constitutes science, not uncertain opinion that has not yet crystal- 

 lized into knowledge. 



We have heard a great deal about " missing links." If the 

 authorities fail to discriminate correctly between Species living and 

 moving before their eyes, what are they likely to do with the 

 crushed remains of extinct forms ? If the links were all in their 

 hands would they recognize them ? If the skeletons of the widely 

 divergent forms of our dog were found in the rocks they would 

 hardly be taken for the same kind of animal, let alone the same 

 Species 



We have also heard a good deal about the breaking down of 

 barriers between species and species, genus and genus, order and 

 order, kingdom and kingdom. What were these barriers ? Artificial 

 ones, erected by man at the limit of his knowledge, which with an in- 

 crease of that, he found it necessary to remove, as he had put them 

 up in the wrong place ; but Nature's one and only barrier, found in 

 the whole breadth of the animal kingdom, stands just where it did 

 before ever man began to investigate it, and as firmly as ever it did, 

 and that is the one between Species, no other having any existence 

 in Nature whatever. 



