THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL. KINGDOMS 115 



the hypothesis of a progression of species which takes 

 place under certain favoring conditions, now apparently 

 of comparatively rare occurrence. The case of the oats 

 is the more valuable, as bearing upon the suggestion as to 

 a protraction of the gestation at a particular part of its 

 course. Here, the generative process is, by the simple 

 mode of cropping down, kept up for a whole year beyond 

 its usual term. The type is thus allowed to advance, and 

 what was oats becomes rye. 



The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic 

 life upon the globe — and the hypothesis is applicable to 

 all similar theatres of vital being — is, that the simplest 

 and most primitive type under a law to which that of 

 like ])roduction is subordinate, gave bir'th to the type next 

 above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so 

 on to'the very highest, the stages of advance being in all 

 cases very small — namely, from one species only to an- 

 other ; so that the phenomenon has always been of a sim- 

 ple and modest character. Whether the whole of any spe 

 cies was at once translated forward, or only a few parents 

 were employed to give birth to the new type, must remain 

 undetermined ; but, supposing that the former was the 

 case, we must presume that the moves along the line or 

 lines were simultaneous, so that the place vacated by one 

 species was immediately taken by the next in succession, 

 and so on back to the first, for the supply of which the 

 formation of a new germinal vesicle out of inorganic mat- 

 ter was alone necessary. Thus, the production of new 

 forms, as shown in the pages of the geological record, has 

 never been anything more than a new stage of progress in 

 gestation, an event as simply natural, and attended as lit - 

 tle by any circumstances of a wonderful or startling kind, 

 as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week 

 to another of her pregnancy. Yet, be it remembered, the 

 whole phenomena are, in another point of view, wonders 

 of the highest kind, for in each of them we have to trace 

 the effect of an Almighty Will which had arranged the 

 whole in such harmony with external physical circum- 

 stances, that both were developed in parallel steps — and 

 probably this development upon our planet is but a sam- 

 ple of what has taken place, through the same cause, in 

 all the other countless theatres of being which are sus- 

 pended in space. 



This may be the proper place at which to introduce tha 



