114 PROF. J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S._, F.K.G.S., ON 



the primordial fauna must indicate on any theory of evolution the 

 pre-existence of earlier (probably vastly earlier) unknown faunas. 

 Palaeontology begins with Vol. X, not Vol. I, of biological history. 



Again, it cannot be too clearly realised that the early history of 

 land surfaces is almost nil. The coal, I suppose, was rather a swamp 

 than an actual land surface. And before the coal and the Devonian 

 what is there ? But if there were sea beds, there must almost 

 certainly have been land surfaces ; and in the Silurian, Ordovician, 

 Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian land surfaces, it may have been, and 

 probably was, that there existed a vast library of Palseobotany. 

 Plants being always sedentary are far more dependent on local 

 circumstances than animals. Here there are vast unknown terms. 

 In natural problems, as in others, unknown terms cannot safely be 

 neglected ; often they have to be retained as unknown terms in the 

 result. 



But when we come to the latter part of the paper I find myself as 

 much in discord with Professor Lobley as with Dr. Warring. I find 

 it as difficult to imagine natural causes not in their origin super- 

 natural as to imagine the natural and the supernatural confused in 

 their working out. I can conceive no natural cause which is not 

 supernatural in primal origin ; I can conceive no supernatural origin 

 which is not natural in its result. That only is supernatural which 

 is above and before nature, and unless nature is self-originating, it 

 must have originated from the supernatural. But in our common 

 and inaccurate use natural and supernatural are only conventional 

 terms, and only mean processes we understand and processes we 

 don't understand. 



The weakness of the Professor's argument seems to me to come 

 out at the conclusion. He gives heredity, variation, and environ- 

 ment as furnishing the " general causes " of Biological change. 

 Heredity, however, is a centripetal force, it offers no explanation of 

 progress but only of the preservation of things. The other two are 

 valid as operating causes of progress, but they are open to the leading 

 question, " What caused them ? " The Professor seems to attempt 

 to answer this by saying " The Reign of Law is supreme." Let 

 this be granted. Law cannot be self-constituted, for then it would 

 be chance and not law. So we reach the final question, " What is 

 the origin of law?" To use Henslow's term we may answer 

 Directivity ; an older synonym is Design. I can find no other origin 



