No Transitio7tal Species. 161 



series of horses came in. But far from being tran- 

 sitional, one changing into another, as Professor 

 Huxley contended (No. 121, 131), " they differ from 

 each other in a greater degree," says Professor 

 Owen as quoted by Mivart in his Genesis of Spe- 

 cies, " than do the horse, zebra and ass," which are 

 distinct physiological species. There came in those 

 extinct forms, birds with teeth in their jaws, and 

 with long tails, biped reptiles with the hollow bones 

 and some other characteristics of birds. I will not 

 distress you with the big names of archaeopteryx, 

 odontornis, etc. All these are held to be transi- 

 tional — a very obscure term covering a very gratui- 

 tous idea. Let us use a distinct term, and say, they 

 are gradational, in the sense explained before, that 

 " nature is continuous " or gradational, in her spe- 

 cies and races alike (No. 121). They only exhibit 

 gradations, for in fact many of them subsist along 

 with the very species which they are supposed to 

 join by passing over from one to the other. J. 

 Barrande studied with conscientious care 350 forms 

 of the trilobites of Bohemia: only ten of these 

 varied at all in the whole depth of the strata which 

 contained them: the variations did not interfere 

 with their specific characters; and, instead of be- 

 coming more pronounced in time, they left the 

 species at the end of the record as it was at the be- 

 ginning. Hilgendorf found twenty types of the mul- 

 tiform planorbis; instead of their evolving from one 

 another, he found them subsisting at the same 



