252 



EXPLANATIONS. 



taken assumptions with regard to the constitution of tta 

 animal kingdom. It is impossible, as they say, to mak« 

 out a genealogy in a line of orders ; but let a fresh natu- 

 ralist of equal standing judge of the theory after he h*« 

 considered the animal kingdom in the arrangement now 

 suggested, and I feel assured that its feasibility will re- 

 ceive a more favorable verdict. 



The reviewer, however, would not abate one jot of his 

 opinion, although Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen were all 

 against him ! If such be the state of his mind regarding 

 Cuvier, with what face can he condemn St. Hilaire, who 

 only does that towards the dead lion which our critic 

 would also do, supposing the dead lion were equally op- 

 posed to his opinion ? The grounds for this strong as- 

 surance are in personal and immediate observation of 

 facts. " We have examined," says he, " the old records 

 ... in the spots where nature placed them, and we 

 know their true historical meaning. . . . We have visited 

 in succession the tombs and charnel-houses of these old 

 times, and we took with us the clew spun in the fabric 

 of development ; but we found this clew no guide through 

 these ancient labyrinths, and, sorely against our will, we 

 were compelled to snap its thread. . . . We now dare af- 

 firm that geology, not seen through the mist of any theory, 

 but taken as a plain succession of monuments and facts, 

 offers one firm cumulative argument against the hypothe- 

 sis of development." What first strikes us in this decla- 

 ration is the tone in which the writer speaks of his own 

 convictions. Cuvier, Agassiz, Owen, may all be wrong; 

 but this writer cannot. He has seen what he speaks of. 

 Against " a dogmatical dictation contrary to the sobe" 

 rules of sound philosophy" (his own words,) there might 

 have surely been some protection in the necessity of re- 

 tractation to which the best geologists are occasionally 

 reduced. For example, we have Professor Sedgwick, in 

 1831, undoing a theory he had formerly embraced: 



'* We now connect the gravel of the plains with the 



elevation of the newest system of mountains That 



these statements militate against opinions but a few years 

 since held almost universally among us, cannot be denied. 

 But theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent gene- 

 ralizations of an advancing science, must ever be regard- 

 id hut as shifting hypothesis to be modified by every new 

 iact % till at hngtih they become accordant with all th$ 



