962 Vestiges of Creation. 



the tenement with man, even with the " chivalric upper classes, 1 ' 

 without any one attempting to account for their presence by hypo- 

 thesis : and let us again inquire whether the animals enumerated are 

 of that low rank which is a postulate with our author in new 

 creations. 



So much for granules, now for " stages of advance," " very small, 

 namely from one species to another, and always of a simple and 

 modest character." The illustration is this: — "It appears that, 

 whenever oats sown at the usual time are kept cropped down during 

 summer and autumn, and allowed to remain over the winter, a thin 

 crop of rye is the harvest presented at the close of the ensuing sum- 

 mer. This experiment has been tried repeatedly, with but one result : 

 invariably the Secale cereale is the crop reaped where the Avena 

 sativa, a recognised different species, was sown. * * * * Here 

 the generative process is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept 

 up for a whole year beyond its usual term. The type is thus allowed 

 to advance, and what was oats becomes rye." — p. 225. Now, with- 

 out noticing the suspicious nature of the premises, or the weakness of 

 the reasoning, let us imagine the fact established and the reasoning 

 good, and then let us enquire whether the author is aware that, in a 

 natural series hundreds certainly, and thousands probably, of species 

 intervene between the two plants which he has named as belonging 

 to separate natural families of plants : if the oat of agriculture were 

 to indulge in metamorphotic vagary from one species to another, it 

 would, at the lowest possible estimate, have to take hundreds of 

 simple and modest stages from species to species, before it be- 

 came rye. 



Another illustration of the simple and modest advances from spe- 

 cies to species, the author thinks may be found in the " curious facts 

 stated with regard to forests of one kind of tree that have been burnt 

 down being succeeded (without planting) by other kinds." — p. 226. 

 In America we have evidence that the gigantic hemlocks are suc- 

 ceeded by poplars, and the live oaks by Rhododendrons and Azaleas, 

 while in England, the ashes of our Erica cinerea give birth to dense 

 crops of Bartramia pomiformis. The last mentioned of these phe- 

 nomena, although familiar to us all, would, perhaps, be disallowed by 

 our author, since the phenomenon is rather in the wrong direction : 

 but the author makes no attempt to prove that the new crop bears any 

 resemblance to that which preceded. Such is not the case. But 

 suppose that it were, suppose that Coniferae were succeeded by Co- 

 nifcrae, Amcntacea; by Amentaceac, Ericacea? by Ericacca) ; suppose 



