APPENDIX. 



383 



things, must have reduced existence so much, that an 

 unoccapied field would be formed for new diverging 

 ramifications of life, which, from the connected sexual 

 system of vegetables, and the natural instincts of animals 

 to herd and combine with their own kind, would fall into 

 specific groups, these remnants, in the course of time, 

 moulding and accommodating their being anew to the 

 change of circumstances, and to every possible means of 

 subsistence, and the millions of ages of regularity which 

 appear to have followed between the epochs, probably 

 after this accommodation was completed, affording fossil 

 deposit of regular specific character. 



There are only two probable ways of change — the 

 above, and the still wider de^dation from present occur- 

 rence, — of indestructible or molecular life (which seems 

 to resolve itself into powers of attraction and repulsion 

 under mathematical figure and regulation, bearing a slight 

 systematic similitude to the great aggregations of mat- 

 ter), gi'adually uniting and developing itself into new 

 circumstance-suited living aggi'egates, without the pre- 

 sence of any mould or germ of former aggregates, but 

 this scarcely diflfers from new creation, only it forms a 

 portion of a continued scheme or system. 



In endeavouring to trace, in the former way, the prin- 

 ciple of these changes of fashion which have taken place 

 in the domiciles of life, the following questions occur : 

 Do they arise from admixture of species nearly allied 

 producing intermediate species ? Are they the diverging 

 ramifications of the living principle under modification of 



