EARLY REPTILIAN FOSSILS 



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[ud&ment wherever the adverse evidence may appear to 

 De of a nature likely to be reversed. Let us now see 

 how all this applies to the conduct of the Edinburgh re- 

 viewer, with regard to the early reptilian fossils. The 

 formations where these occur have only been examined 

 in such a degree, that they are almost every year giving 

 forth new responses: for example, the existence of birds 

 at this era was not dreamt of ten years ago ; the existence 

 of tortoises in the time of the New Red Sandstone was 

 equally unknown only two or three years earlier. It is 

 a still less time since the labyrinthidonts of the Keuper of 

 Germany were discovered; and we have just seen that 

 the unqualified affirmations of the Edinburgh reviewer, 

 as to the oldest reptiles, were overturned by intelligence 

 from America, before his sheets had seen the light. When 

 these things are considered, we must see the objections of 

 the reviewer to be extremely rash. It might be allowed 

 that the earliest known lacertilia are not of strictly ma- 

 rine forms or allied to fish ; it might equally be admitted 

 of the first batrachians, that " their near affinities are not 

 with fishes," as this writer takes upon him to say. Yet 

 we should still see the absurdity of affirming that either 

 these batrachia or lacertilia were the first created of their 

 respective orders, seeing that their relics were so few and 

 the discovery of these so accidental, that we might look 

 for new and superseding facts every day.* 



But, as the case actually stands, is this line of defence 

 more than hypothetically necessary? I doubt it very 

 much. The lacertilia of the magnesian limestone, and 

 these labyrinthidonts of the Trias (perhaps also of the 

 carboniferous formation,) are they so far removed from 

 fish characters as the reviewer would make them ? Let 

 any naturalist who has ever studied the transmutation of 

 the individual batrachian, passing in a few weeks from 

 the branchiated fish to the lunged and limbed frog or 

 newt, its circulatory and alimentary system entirely 

 j • It is necessary to guard against a supposition that I undervalue 

 such isolated relics, as inferring the positive fact of the existence 

 of particular orders of animals at particular times. For this pur- 

 pose, the smallest fragment betraying the character of the organi- 

 zation is often sufficient. What is really meant is, that, w^hen we 

 find a few outlying relics belonging to a class which does not ap- 

 pear in any force till afterwards, we cannot be sure that we have 

 acquired the means of forming a distinct idea of the time of the 

 origin of that class or the orders with which the class started, as 

 further discoveries on these ooints may be looked for. 



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