5482 Zoology : its present Phasis 



for one or more generations at least, under a generic, and not a spe- 

 cific form, and by the fact, admitting of demonstration, that, even in 

 the highest forms of the vertebrate animals themselves, the young, up 

 to a certain point, is a generic animal in its natural-history characters, 

 and not specific, but with this additional remarkable circumstance, 

 that it combines in itself the natural-history characters of all or most of 

 the species of the natural family to which it belongs.* Adopt this 

 view, and it explains to a certain extent, if not the disappearance of 

 species in time and space, the coming upon the stage of life of other 

 species seemingly new, but which are not so, being merely the deve- 

 lopment of specific forms which lay concealed in the genus or family. 

 Agreeably to this view, generic creation at least is universal, appli- 

 cable to countless generations. Specific appearances, on the con- 

 trary, are accidental chapters in the history of the globe ; species 

 perish, genera persist ; the embryo of the future organic world lies 

 concealed in the present, as the embryo of the present lay wrapt up 

 in " the past." The compensation spoken of by somet as a natural 

 compensation is wholly human. " If species," say they, " die out, 

 individuals multiply ; and this compensation is in favour of mankind." 

 The theory has a strong odour of the present utilitarian age ; nor is it 

 a fresh theory in any sense of the term. c< All things were made for 

 the use of man," to have dominion over and to turn to account; but 

 as most of Nature's productions are useless or even detrimental to 

 man's interests, the way to turn them to the best account is no doubt 

 to destroy them, their existence and his being incompatible, substi- 

 tuting in their place the useful. M. Isidore Geoffroy (St. Hilaire), with 

 the fondness of a naturalist for Nature's works, proposes the naturali- 

 zation of some of the beauteous and harmless animals with which she 

 has peopled the globe. Not so says his colleague, the more acute, 

 practical M. Fleurens : these things, he remarks, look well in museums 

 and natural-history collections, but are not to be compared with 

 sheep and oxen, horses and pigs. Improve these, says the astute fol- 

 lower (at an immense distance no doubt — so distant indeed as almost 

 to have lost sight of him) of the immortal Cuvier ; improve the domes- 

 tic breeds formed by man ; follow the English, the only people who 

 understand the true fattening of domestic animals ; extirpate Nature's 

 works which are useless to man, and cultivate henceforward only the 

 flora and the fauna comprised in the scant vocabulary of the farmer 

 and the market-gardener. Alas ! for that Academy where sat Geof- 



* Knox. f Fleurens. 



