APPENDIX. 



381 



banks of the sea basin of the Tay — the less diffusible re- 

 mains of the removed portion of the alluvium which had 

 once occupied all that basin, and to the remaining por- 

 tion of the alluvium also retained by artificial means. 



Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable in* 

 convenience, from the adopted dogmatical classification 

 of plants, and have all along been floundering between 

 species and variety, which certainly under culture soften 

 into each other. A particular conformity, each after its 

 own kind, when in a state of nature, termed species, no 

 doubt exists to a considerable degree. This conformity 

 has existed during the last forty centuries. Geologists dis- 

 cover a like particular conformity — ^fossil species — through 

 the deep deposition of each great epoch, but they also 

 discover an almost complete difference to exist between 

 the species or stamp of life, of one epoch from that of 

 every other. We are therefore led to admit, either of a 

 repeated miraculous creation ; or of a power of change, 

 under a change of cu'cumstances, to belong to living or- 

 ganized matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life, 

 which appears to form superior. The derangements and 

 changes in organized existence, induced by a change of 

 circumstance from the interference of man, affording us 



