REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE LI. 
cervix, loms, sacrum and caudex. In this respect figs. A 
and B agree with recent formations. 
But if the marvel will still attach to figs. A and B 
because we do not now recognize any living form cast 
after the same exact mould as they are, what odds can 
this make to the law of natural operation any more than 
the oddity of a recent turtle when compared to the singu- 
larity of a recent porpoise? Wherefore is it, we ask, that 
Nature should have been struck bizarre to suit the epoch 
of fig. A or B, when she is now in 1847 regnant in a 
majesty of glorious order for that strange figure.the Boa, 
as for that which it entwines about,—the Behemoth 
of the wild. Anatemically considered and interpreted 
according to the possible operation of a law of develop- 
ment, the one form is no less a marvel than the other, and 
neither the one nor the other is anomalous to the creative 
passage of this law, which has ruled over creation in the 
past as it still rules it in the present. 
How is it that fig. A, compared with fig. B., and both 
with recent structures, gives us cause for pause and won- 
der? It is because we have not as yet ascertained the 
nature and essential meaning of that sentence of design 
which one recent form expresses while comparatively 
contemplated in the presence of another recent skeleton 
structure ; and hence we say, that before we engage to 
penetrate into the mystery of a past, it is required that 
we should have explained away the mystery of a present, 
for this is the subject which more immediately touches us. 
The metamorphosis of form is an operation which, in 
present nature, takes place before our eyes, and still the 
planetary system is as little disturbed by the occurrence of 
the same, and the firm-set earth on which we stand holds 
its own fixed orbit in the region of space, as little moved 
by the fact that a horse’s shank and hoof is a modification 
of the parts proper to a human hand, as in all probability 
it held at the period of time when figs. A and B possessed 
life, and acted as the denizens of a natura such as we now 
find it. And what are the objections which can be set in 
opposition to this commonplace and homespun idea? If 
we will dispassionately examine those objections, in order 
to estimate their actual value in a serious subject, it will 
be found that they take root in an original error, in an 
assumed hypothesis, which is of as little akin to science 
and to the attributes of Zeds as are the contents of the 
Alkoran while recordative of the physiological character of 
the author, winging his passage to the seventh tier of the 
Olympian realm. The Palzontologist still cleaves to the idea 
of a Téveous,* but the Physiologist can nowhere define that 
fact. For where does it occur? and when has it had place 
in the natura ? Who knows of an absolute Téveois now in 
vos ?+ We mean such an absolute occurrence of that 
operation as may be understood ab nihilo ens fit, and 
judging of the foregone by the present state, who shall 
speak demonstratively of that act in the past when it does 
not appear in the present? If the lost species of fig. A or 
B be a thing past when compared with existing species, 
wherefore should we spoil the majesty which is attendant 
upon the idea of an eternal law immutable and fixed, by 
‘is to the possible and natural. 
any introduction of the idea of a finis or an origo, which 
are but the products of our own weakness. For while we 
know that the extinction of foetal cast is necessary to the 
existence of the adult form, and that in the metamor- 
phosis of the ens the law is still continuous and remaining 
of its own integrity, as being a force which cannot be 
retraced to its rise any more than it can be followed 
onwards to its fall or decline, may not the same creative 
force have operated anterior to and co-existing with the 
epoch of fig. A and B, and peopled the natura through all 
the stages of eternal time with an animal kingdom, 
uniform and yet various to itself, for purposes the same as 
are now rendered evident to us ? 
Upon what phenomena at present manifesting them- 
selves to the Geological speculator does he found his 
impossible system of cosmogony, and set himself to retrace 
the footsteps of the natura back to her fountain-head 
in nihilo, in nubibus, that is to say in mente? The Geo- 
logist is with reason astonished by the revelation that figs. 
A and B le strewn beneath the soil of Britain, together 
with the fact that the remains of Elephants, Rhinoceroses, 
and Hippopotami, are also entombed within this soil; 
and therefore he concludes that either this planet was 
once in that condition which it no longer presents, or else 
that these species being produced in those regions to which 
their existing species are now confined, have been borne 
hither by some catastrophe or fitful outbreak of the ocean 
flood, causing a general and sudden death to animality. 
To what end? To make an epoch in Téveois, and give a 
place to man. What place? When? and where? By 
what arm could this quick slaughterous act and passage in 
creation have had occurrence? By the arm of all-potent 
imagination ; for there is reason to believe that this ruinous 
and headlong operation has had no more occurrence in the 
natura atany time or place than thefollowing feat could have: 
And in Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber ; and how he fell 
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o’er the crystal battlements ; from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer’s day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star 
On Lemnos th’ Aigean isle.” 
The purely imaginative is as unallied to the reason as it 
What part, therefore, can 
the imaginative play in the presence of the natural but 
that of a ridiculous disorder sullying the sublime majesty 
of order? We make causes for natural revelations, rather 
than reason them out according to probable and possible 
operation. We impatiently soar to the empyreal atmo- 
sphere of our own region of error, instead of humbly 
following in the footmarks of the form and body of the 
natura. We still Whistonise, still Burnetise, and Wood- _ 
wardise in the laws of causation, and bending all the 
natural aside to make way for the abortive anomalies of 
our own fancy, we burst a world just as readily as we 
burst a bubble; and entering the lists with the spear and 
buckler of a quixotic vanity, we tournay against the holy 
writ of the natural, and overthrow ourselves. 
* “Or this great all was from Eternity— 
Not even the Stagyrite himself could see.”—Drypen. 
t “Il y a des choses que tout le monde dit, parce qu’elles ont été dites une fois.”—Montesquien, Consid. sur les Causes de la 
Grandeur des Romains, &e. 
