WHAT ARE SPECIES 



11 special creations " in each country ; and these conclusions 

 were arrived at after a careful study of Lamarck's work, a full 

 abstract of which is given in the earlier editions of the 

 Principles of Geology. 1 



Professor Agassiz, one of the greatest naturalists of the last 

 generation, went even further, and maintained not only that 

 each species was specially created, but that it was created in 

 the proportions and in the localities in which we now find it 

 to exist. The following extract from his very instructive 

 book on Lake Superior explains this view : " There are in 

 animals peculiar adaptations which are characteristic of their 

 species, and which cannot be supposed to have arisen from 

 subordinate influences. Those which live in shoals cannot be 

 supposed to have been created in single pairs. Those which 

 are made to be the food of others cannot have been created 

 in the same proportions as those which live upon them. 

 Those which are everywhere found in innumerable specimens 

 must have been introduced in numbers capable of maintaining 

 their normal proportions to those which live isolated and are 

 comparatively and constantly fewer. For we know that this 

 harmony in the numerical proportions between animals is 

 one of the great laws of nature. The circumstance that 

 species occur within definite limits where no obstacles prevent 

 their wider distribution leads to the further inference that 

 these limits were assigned to them from the beginning, and 

 so we should come to the final conclusion that the order 

 which prevails throughout nature is intentional, that it is 

 regulated by the limits marked out on the first day of 

 creation, and that it has been maintained unchanged through 

 ages with no other modifications than those which the higher 

 intellectual powers of man enable him to impose on some 

 few animals more closely connected with him." 2 



These opinions of some of the most eminent and influential 

 writers of the pre -Darwinian age seem to us, now, either 

 altogether obsolete or positively absurd : but they never- 

 theless exhibit the mental condition of even the most 

 advanced section of scientific men on the problem of the 



1 These expressions occur in Chapter IX. of the earlier editions (to the 

 ninth) of the Principles of Geology. 



2 L. Agassiz. Lake Superior, p. 377. 



