No. 48.— 1897.] on Wallace's theory. 



89 



some common ancestor, we are not descendants of either the 

 gorilla or the chimpanzee, nor can we look on any existing 

 species as our ancestors. 



In the same way the money cowry can never give rise to 

 a fish, reptile, bird, or mammal. It has long passed the point 

 from which the molluscous branch started, or that from 

 which bivalves or univalves, cowries, and olives arose. But 

 its varieties, supposing it has not attained the highest point 

 possible of development along its own line, will, with 

 changing environment, give rise to new species, new genera, 

 new families, then to groups which if we were immortal we 

 should recognize as mollusca, and after to groups of which we 

 can form no conception. This of course is a mere hypothesis 

 as regards G. annulis, hw.tt\iQ Paleontologists are daily proving 

 more and more clearly that it is no hypothesis for the animals 

 of the past. 



The race of man has existed for so short a time that he 

 speaks of the hills as everlasting. Geologists tell a very 

 different tale, beautifully condensed by Tennyson : — 

 earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 







The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 



9. Mr. Ferguson said the Paper just read was to him full of 

 interest and instruction. Last September he was present in Professor 

 Poulton's section of the British Association, when there was a battle- 

 royal between Darwinians and anti-Darwinians ; but the latter — only 

 one or two — got very much worsted. He remembered many years 

 ago hearing a lecture from a young naturalist (now a well-known 

 Professor), in which he went so far as to remark on the spots 

 on the camelopard as the consequence of its habit of standing under 

 trees in its African home, the shade gradually causing the spots, in 

 contrast with the bright sunshine on the rest of the body ! He did not 

 think the grave Professor of the present day would repeat such far- 

 fetched suggestions of his youth. Meantime, he for one would be 

 obliged if Mr. Haly — out of consideration to the rudimentary 

 knowledge which most of them who had only dipped into the writings 

 of Darwin, Wallace, and Romanes, possessed — could in a few words 



16—97 H 



