CORRESPONDENCE. 



527 



place in the Miocene to true ruminants, and to mammalia more closely resem- 

 bling the existing fauna. It is not until the Pliocene period that we find mam- 

 malia of the same species as the present. Some of the extinct forms, us the 

 rhinoceros, elk, and hseyna of Europe, lived down to the period when man existed 

 with, and probably extirpated them. At Abbeville, in France, and Kostritz, in 

 Saxony, the remains of man are found in the same strata as the remains of those 

 animals which are now confined to more tropical regions. The antiquity of the 

 human race, as proved by the discoveries of M. Boucher do Perthes, is thus thrown 

 back to a historically distant period, though a recent one geologically. As Prof. 

 Owen says, " There seems to have been a time when life was not ; there may 

 therefore be a period when it will cease to be" (p. 412). 



Professor Owen, after recapitulating the order in which animal life made its 

 appearance upon earth, devotes much space to the subject of the extinction of 

 species, and points out many species of animals which are vanishing before the 

 onward march of civilized man. The dodo has disappeared from the Mascarene 

 Islands within the last two hundred years. The beaver, once common in Wales 

 in the historical period, survives still in the back woods of America, and is rapidly 

 becoming extinct. The chase in Europe has almost extirpated the races of bears, 

 wild boars, wolves, elks, and wild oxen, which peopled our English plains within 

 historic times. The aurochs, descendant of the once formidable Bison prisons, 

 is only preserved in Lithuania through the careful protection of the Emperor of 

 Russia. The author of the present paper has been personally assured by an 

 intelligent Moor, Hadj Arabi Ben-Is, that the breed of lions is rapidly verging 

 towards extinction on the slopes of the greater and lesser Atlas. The elephants 

 and rhinoceroses of Abbeville were contemporary with man, and most probably 

 were extirpated by him. In the last century a colossal cetacean existed in enormous 

 shoals in Behring's Straits, but has since succumbed to the ravages of the 

 whalers, On the other hand, many species,of domestic animals, as, e. g., the 

 horse, ox, sheep, &c, have been introduced by man into geographical situations 

 remote from their original habitat. 



With respect to the momentous subject of the " mysterious coming into being" 

 of species, which has been canvassed amongst scientific men for the last hundred 

 years, it is my object to endeavour to lay the present state of the question clearly 

 before your readers. 



The position in which the contending forces of special creationists and progres- 

 sionists rest at present has little changed from those occupied by the great chiefs 

 and antagonists of past science, Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire amongst palae- 

 ontologists, Lyell and Sedgwick amongst geologists. The same creeds and 

 watchwords are maintained by the hierarchs and generals of the day. But they 

 are professed and given by different disciples, and by less obedient and even 

 more mutinous sentinels. It is impossible for the most " prepossessed uniformi- 

 tarian" to contend that there is not springing up at the present day a vast sec- 

 tion of geologists who agree with Baden Powell in his memorable declaration 

 that " while those arguments most commonly relied upon against transmutation 

 are completely refuted, there is still no positive evidence to establish it as a 

 demonstrated theory. Yet, as a mere philosophical conjee jure, the idea of 

 transmutation of species, under adequate changes of condition, and in incalcu- 

 lably long periods of time, seems supported by fair analogy and probability." 

 Whether obscured by the dazzling sophisms of over-zealous teleologists, or muti- 

 lated in the corrupt elementary treatises of the day, the great morphological 

 principles of unity of, and adherence to, archetype, and successional development 

 throughout geological time, proclaimed by Owen, St. Hilaire, and De Blainville, 

 seem fairly to have maintained their claim to be treated as legitimate postulates. 

 The successive and special creations, "invented by Cuvier as Ovid invented 

 metamorphoses," are no longer universally regarded as the way by which the 

 enormous phenomena of living beings have been produced. The belief is rapidly 

 increasing amongst biologists that the true appreciation of the causes which have 

 originated such changes is to be arrived at by a careful examination of the phe- 

 nomena exhibited by the lower animals, e. g-, parthenogenesis, and the alternation 



