hunter's posthumous paper on fossils. 311 



" There are very few fossils that can be matched with the recent, or 

 [else] that the recent are not known now to exist : yet though very few 

 fossils correspond with the recent, though very similar [to them], yet they 

 may not be of different species, but varieties ; for there is no more rea- 

 son [meaning there is as much reason] for an animal in the sea varying 

 from its original, from a difference in soil [sea-bottom] and other cir- 

 cumstances, than [as] there is for those upon land, which we see they 

 do ; but if they are really different species, then we must suppose the 

 old are lost ; therefore a new creation must have taken place. But that 

 many are actually lost is, I think, plainly shown, by the remains of land- 

 animals that are now not known. Yet how they became extinct is not 

 easily accounted for." — P. vii. 



Hunter puts the entire question hypothetically : he nowhere commits 

 himself to a positive assertion. He knew that some fossils were " not 

 matchable with the recent," but draws no hasty conclusion from this 

 fact. Such recent analogues might exist, but be not yet discovered. 

 The fact of extinction seems, indeed, to be "plainly shown by the 

 remains of land-animals that are now not known :" and, " if they are 

 really different species a new creation must have taken place." 



But Hunter refrains from drawing, even from the same premiss, that 

 extreme conclusion ; for, where the fossils do not correspond with any 

 known recent forms, and are only similar to such, " yet they may not 

 be of different species, but varieties." He puts it all hypothetically : 

 and this caution and reticence are eminently consistent with every 

 evidence we now possess of his intellectual idiosyncrasy 1 . 



Hunter, doubtless, called to mind the vast tracts in the interior of 

 Africa and Australia which were unexplored in his day, and where 

 probably such analogues of otherwise unmatchable fossils might still 

 exist. On the degree of that probability I may afterwards have some- 

 thing to say. With the possibility, so much greater in Hunter's time 

 than the assiduous explorations and extensive collections of Naturalists 

 have since made it, it was incompatible with his caution and pure love 

 of truth to commit himself to an absolute conclusion. But if even 



1 [The fact of extinction being now commonly admitted, the editor of the College 

 edition of the present manuscript, of course affirms of Hunter, " He had, how- 

 ever, perceived the true nature of these fossils as relics of animals no longer living 

 on the surface of the earth, as having belonged to a former creation, so that, in his 

 own phrase, they could not be ' matched with the recent ' [an absolute assertion no- 

 where to be found in the MS.] ; he felt that the extinction of such races, &c, can only 

 be explained by revolutions in the surface of the globe during periods of immense, 

 but indefinite and uncertain duration. He may therefore be regarded as having 

 laid the foundation of that interesting branch of science for which his modern suc- 

 cessors have devised the name of Palaeontology."— Preface, p. 3.] 



