140 



Bevieivs and Xotices of Books. 



fishes put on the reptilian guise in the same period, or else the 

 vast lapse of ages required for the production of a reptile from a 

 fish must be indefinitely increased for the production of many 

 dissimilar reptiles from each other ; or, on the other hand, we 

 must suppose that the limit between the fish and reptile being 

 once overpassed, a facility for comparatively rapid changes 

 became the property of the latter. Either supposition would, I 

 think, contradict such facts bearing on the subject as are known 

 to us. 



" We commenced witli supposing that the reptiles of the coal 

 might possibly be the first of their family ; but it is evident from 

 the above considerations, that, on the doctrine of natural selection, 

 the number and variety of reptiles in this period would imply 

 that their predecessors in this form must have existed from a 

 time earlier than any in which even fishes are known to exist, so 

 that if we adopt any hypothesis of derivation, it would probably 

 be necessary to have recourse to that which supposes at particular 

 periods a sudden and as yet unaccountable transmutation of one 

 form into another — a view which, in its remoteness from any thing 

 included under ordinary natural laws, does not materially differ 

 from that currently received idea of creative intervention with 

 which, in so far as our coal reptiles can inform us, we are for the 



present satisfied." 



* * * * « 



Humble though the subjects of this paper are, we see in 

 them the work of Supreme Intelligence, introducing new types 

 upon the scene, and foreshadowing in them those higher forms 

 afterward to be created. It is this, their Divine origin, and the 

 light which they throw on the plan and order of the creative work, 

 of which we ourselves form a part, that gives them all their 

 interest to us. They are the handiwork of our Father and our 

 God, traces of His presence in primeval ages of the earth, evi- 

 dences of the unity of His plan and pledges of its progressive 

 nature, adding their feeble voices to the testimony of revelation 

 in respect to the history of creation in its earlier stages, and to 

 the carrying on of that plan which still involves the extinction of 

 many things from the present world, and the elevation of others 

 into new and glorious manifestations. Their place in the system 

 of nature and in the order of the world's progress, their uses in 

 their own time, and their relations to other beings as parts of the 

 great cosmos, are the points that chiefly interest us ; and if any 

 one desires to understand more in detail how they were created, 

 we wish him all success in his inquiries, but warn him not to 

 suppose that this great mystery is to be solved by a reference 

 merely to material agencies, apart from that Spiritual Power who 

 is the essence of forces, the origin of laws." 



