138 



Bevieivs and Notices of Boohs. 



marine and land remains, and even mixtures of these, are frequent 

 in modern submarine forests. When we find, as at Fort Law- 

 rence in Nova Scotia, a modern forest rooted in upland soil forty 

 feet below high- water mark, and covered with mud containing 

 living Tellinas and Myas, we are not justified in inferring that 

 this forest grew in the sea. We rather infer that subsidence has 

 occurred. In modern salt marshes it is not unusual to find every 

 little runnel or pool full of marine shell-fish, while in the higher 

 parts of the marsh land plants are growing, and in such places 

 the deposit formed must contain a mixture of land plants and 

 marine animals with salt grasses and herbage, the whole in situ" 



There are some interesting remarks on the bearings of the facts 

 on the origin of species, and the author brings forward statements 

 which convey strong impressions of the permanence of species. 

 On the subject of transmutation, he gives the following judicious 

 observations : — • 



" If we could affirm that the air-breathers of the coal period 

 were really the first species of their several families, they might 

 acquire additional interest by their bearing on this question of 

 origin of species. We cannot affirm this ; but it may be a harm- 

 less and not uninstructive play of fancy, to suppose for a moment 

 that they actually are so, and to inquire on this supposition as to 

 the mode of their introduction. Looking at them from this point 

 of view, we shall first be struck with the fact that they belong to 

 all of the three great leading types of animals which include our 

 modern air-breathers — the Vertebrates, the Articulates, and the 

 Mollusks. This at once excludes the supposition that they can 

 all have been derived from each other within the limits of the 

 coal period. No transmutationist can have the hardihood to 

 assert the convertibility, by any direct method, of a snail into a 

 millipede, or of a millipede into a reptile. The plan of structure 

 in these creatures is not only different, but contrasted in its most 

 essential features. It would be far more natural to suppose that 

 these animals sprang from aquatic species of their respective 

 types. We should then seek for the ancestors of the snail in 

 aquatic gasteropods, for those of the millipede in worms or crus- 

 taceans, and for those of the reptiles in the fishes of the period. 

 It would be easy to build up an imaginary series of stages, on the 

 principle of natural selection, whereby these results might be 

 efi'ected ; but the hypothesis would be destitute of any support 

 from fact, and would be beset by more difficulties than it removes. 

 Why should the result of the transformation of water-snails 

 breathing by gills be a Pupa ? Would it not much more likely 

 be an Auricula or a Limnea ? It will not solve this difficulty to 

 say that the intermediate forms became extinct, and so are lost. 

 On the contrary, thoy exist to this day, though they were not, in 



