of the Dichotomous System. 137 



plained how the more numerous they are they produce the more 

 continuity. " But this truth by no means contradicts the Lin- 

 nsean maxim, that no saltus exists in nature, although such has 

 been esteemed its effect by certain naturalists, who have been 

 in the habit of taking the words hiatus and saltus as synonymous 

 terms. Thus the series of the Sy sterna Natures and of the Regne 

 Animal is not natural where the Cetacea intervene between qua- 

 drupeds and birds, but is perfectly consonant with nature where 

 the tortoises are made to follow these last. In the first case there 

 is a saltus or leap from quadrupeds to birds over a group 

 totally dissimilar to the latter; there is, in short, an unnatural 

 interruption of the law of continuity, which shocks not merely 

 the naturalist but the ordinary observer. In the other case 

 there is only an hiatus or chasm, which the discoveries of a 

 future day may fully occupy." 



Having thus, I think, established the truth of the law of con- 

 tinuity as well as of an unity of plan in the Creation, I arrive at 

 the cold, unfeeling sneer on the venerable and excellent natu- 

 ralist, whom Dr. Fleming, ever equally accurate, calls Lamark. 

 I am so far removed from the scientific world that I know not 

 whether Lamarck be alive or dead; but I revere him if still on 

 earth, and respect his memory if he has ascended to a better 

 place. Time has only shown me more and more the truth ol 

 what eight years ago I said of him. " His peculiar and very 

 singular opinions have never gained many converts in his own 

 country, and I believe none in this. They are indeed only to 

 be understood by those who are already supplied with the 

 means of refuting them ; so that the mischief they may have 

 occasioned being comparatively null, we may be permitted to 

 assign due praise to the labours of Lamarck, as being those 

 of the first zoologist France has produced ; as being those of 

 a person, whose merits in natural history bear much the same 

 relation to those of M. Cuvier, that the world has been com- 

 monly accustomed to institute between the calculations of the 

 theoretical and the observations of the practical astronomer." 



Dr. Fleming, by the way, seems to hint that I borrowed the 

 distinction of affinity and analogy from Lamarck. But this 

 only proves that he reads as he reasons. Lamarck says, " On 

 distingue les rapports en ceux qui appartiennent a differens 

 etres compares, et en ceux qui ne se rapportent qu'a des par- 

 ties comparees entre des etres differens." Now the first of these 

 kinds of rapports may be either relations of affinity or of 

 analogy, for both affinity and analogy present resemblances 

 between different objects compared with one another; and the 

 second kind of rapports I shall speedily explain as having no 

 connexion with relations of analogy. There may be good 



N.S. Vol. 8. No. 44. Am. 1830. T reason 



