CLASSIFICATION. 



23 



if when growing they grew in these islands ! and who, I again ask, can 

 prove that they did not ] 



In the tertiary strata we have more familiar prototypes, though here 

 again indicating more or less marked difference from the distinguish- 

 ing characteristics of our present extant cognate genera or specific 

 prototypes ; showing clearly enough the long, long interval of time, 

 and the wonderful change wliich must have taken place in that epoch 

 which includes the so-called glacial period : yet most unmistakably 

 proving that firs and pines were then the predominating forest groTvi;hs ; 

 and likewise demonstrating the fact that each and all of our present 

 prototypes of the firs and pines were then extant ; and that none are 

 now extant but which then were ; though then and now their native 

 habitats both geographically and climatically are much changed. More- 

 over, these fossilized lignines go still further in support of this theory ; 

 for I might refer to such as are now found in our own and other 

 temperate climates of the globe ; for instance, where iron, bronze, and 

 stone implements are found, thence inferentially successive races of 

 men ; we have here again the same idea fully illustrated, and the same 

 theory confirmed; for in the lower or stone strata Pinaceae is pre- 

 dominate ; in the bronze, again, old Quercus was monarch of the 

 woods ; while in the iron, foliar Fagus was forest queen. These facts, 

 though more pertaining to northern latitudes and temperate climates, 

 are now beginning to be as strikingly illustrated and as corrobora- 

 tively demonstrated in southern latitudes and hotter climes ; and 

 as science becomes more practical, as she must inevitably become 

 in her onward progress ; our knowledge, ancient and modern, of the 

 firs and pines, our views of the origin of species, our ideas upon soil, 

 altitude, and climate, our modes of introduction and cultivation, and, 

 more particularly, our classification and nomenclature of them will, in 

 that happy and good time coming, have to undergo great changes ; for 

 all things must change; transition has no end : hence the great and 

 wonderful variety of organic life : of which instances innumerable might 

 be noted ; but let one suffice ; and let that one be one of my proto- 

 types of the genus Pinus ; and let the species be strohus ; and how if 

 it, we may ask, that of this species we have so many quasi-species 

 varieties, and sub-varieties ; yet, each and all of them recognisable a1 

 first sight ; but in all this variety, increasing in degree, however 

 precise or appreciable it may be, we have only variety in size, form, 

 and colour of foliage or cone ; — variety within the bounds of law ; 

 whatever may be our ideas of its relationship, or however we may 



