388 



THE PRESENT ASPECT OF INQUIRIES AS TO THE INTRO- 

 DUCTION OF GENERA AND SPECIES IN GEOLOGICAL 

 TIME. By Principal J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., McGill College, 

 Montreal, Hon. Foreign Corresjmndent of the Victoria Institute.'^' 



IHERE can be no doubt that the theory of evolution, more especially 



that pha^e of it which is advocated by Darwin, has greatly extended 

 its influence, especially among young English and American naturalists, 

 within the few past years. We now constantly see reference made to these 

 theories, as if they were established j)rinciples, applicable without question 

 to the explanation of observed facts, while classifications notoriously based 

 on these views, and in themselves untrue to nature, have gained currency in 

 popular articles and even in text-books. In this way young people are being 

 trained to be evolutionists without being aware of it, and will come to regard 

 nature wholly through this medium. So strong is this tendency, more 

 especially in England, that there is reason to fear that natural history will 

 be prostituted to the service of a shallow philosophy, and that our old 

 Baconian mode of viewing nature will be quite reversed, so that, instead of 

 studying facts in order to arrive at general principles, we shall return to the 

 mediaeval plan of setting up dogmas based on authority only, or on meta- 

 physical considerations of the most flimsy character, and forcibly twisting 

 nature into conformity with their requirements. Thus advanced " views in 

 science lend themselves to the destruction of science, alid to a return to 

 semi-barbarism. 



In these circumstances, the only resource of the true natura,list is an 

 appeal to the careful study of groups of animals and plants in their succes- 

 sion in geological time. I have myself endeavoured to apply this test in my 

 recent report on the Devonian and Silurian flora of Canada, and have shown 

 that the succession of Devonian and Carboniferous plants does not seem 

 explicable on the theory of derivation. Still more recently, in a memoir on 

 the Post-pliocene deposits of Canada, now in course of publication in the 

 Canadian Naturalist, I have by a close and detailed comparison of the 

 numerous species of shells found -embedded in our clays and gravels, with 

 those living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the coasts of Labrador and 

 Greenland, shown that it is impossible to suppose that any changes of the 

 nature of evolution were in progress ; but on the contrary, that all these 

 species have remained the same, even in their varietal changes, from the 

 Post-pliocene period until now. Thus the inference is that these species 



* These remarks are from Dr. Dawson's Annual Address as President 

 of the Natural History Society of Montreal, May, 1872. 



