Vegetable Monstrosities and Races. 449 



tions of more ancient species. Most of these observers admit 

 that such modifications have been produced with exceeding 

 slowness through insensible gradations, so that thousands of 

 generations may have been required to transform one species 

 into a neighbouring species. We know not what may have 

 happened in the course of ages ; but experience and observa- 

 tion teach us that at the actual epoch of anomalies, whether 

 slight or profound, the alterations in what we, perhaps, arbi- 

 trarily, call specific types — the monstrosities, in fact, whether 

 they are of a transitory and individual character, or whether 

 they give rise to new races, persistent and uniform, through 

 an indefinite number of individuals — are produced abruptly; 

 and without any transitive forms between them and the normal 

 form. A new race is born completely formed, and the first 

 individual representing it exhibits the characters of the 

 generations that will succeed if the variation is preserved. 

 New modifications may be added to the first one, and occasion 

 a subdivision into primary and secondary races ; but these 

 appear with the same suddenness as the first variation did. I 

 am not defending the doctrine of evolution. I state merely 

 that the biological phenomenon of one epoch do not justify, 

 in any way, the hypothesis of an insensible degradation of 

 ancient forms, and the necessity for millions of years in order 

 to change the physiognomy of species. Judging from what 

 we know, their transformations, if they have taken place, may 

 have been effected in a much smaller lapse of time than is 

 supposed. There may be alternations in the life of nature, and 

 periods of immobility, apparent or real, may succeed other 

 periods of rapid transformation, during which that which was 

 previously exceptional and abnormal, becomes a portion of the 

 regular order of things. And we must not forget that time is 

 to us a succession of phenomena, and that whether the pheno- 

 mena succeed each other quickly or slowly, it is all one for 

 the doctrine of evolution. In either case the principle of con- 

 tinuity is not assailed. 



vol. xi. — no. vi. g a 



