CORRESPONDENCE. 



529 



My readers will hare read the chapters in which Mr. Darwin laj'S stress upon 

 the enormous lapse of time required for the deposition of the geological strata. 

 However they, like Professors Phillips and Thomson, may impugn the exact 

 details of his statistics, they rise from the perusal of these chapters with the full 

 conviction that the time required must have been immense. They can only 

 comprehend such arithmetical amount by a comparison with those results which 

 astronomical or mathematical science hay arrived at, as to the vast distance 

 between our globe and the solar or sidereal systems. In this extensive field they 

 must reflect that the small portion of space in time which falls under their imme- 

 diate cognizance and observation is not sufficient to enable them to pronounce 

 with any certainty as to the vast laws which may govern the whole. An anony- 

 mous writer on the subject, by a direct illustration of the well-known phenomena* 

 of Babbage's calculating machine, lays great stress upon this argument, and I 

 confess I am inclined to regard it as an approach to truth. By some originally 

 conceived law, consonant with the development of the original type, species 

 which invariably propagate descendants immediately resembling themselves 

 through countless ages, may, after the expiration of some given limit of time, or 

 under the influence of some unknown condition, suddenly change their powe", 

 and develope organs which are superadded to the distinctive characters of their 

 original type. I can see no other way of accounting for the existence of such 

 exceedingly aberrant forms as the Pterodactylus or the Ornithorliynclms. Our 

 induction is not sufficiently vast to lay down general rules upon the subject ; but 

 I think that if the old principle of" successive" and "special" creations repre- 

 senting the so-called "theological" epoch of thought, be abrogated, the principle 

 of the uniformity of progression by natural selection, representing the equally 

 baneful " metaphysical" stage, cannot erect itself a temple on the ruins of the 

 former. It is only by a regard of the question of the origin of species, as one 

 under the influence of some dynamical law, that a solution of this great problem 

 can be arrived at. (Comte. Philosophie Positive.) 



In the words of the eminent writer in the" Edinburgh Eeview" : " Circumstances 

 are conceivable — changes of surrounding influences, the operation of some inter- 

 mittant law at long intervals, like that of the calculating machine quoted by the 

 author of e Vestiges,' under which the monad might go on splitting up into 

 monad, the gregarina might go on breeding gregarince, the cercaria cercariw, &c, 

 and thus four or five not merely different specific, but different generic and 

 ordinal forms, zoologically viewed, might all diverge from an antecedent quite 

 distinct form." 



Mr. David Page, in his recently published little work on the " World's Life- 

 System," exhibited the spirit in which the advanced palaeontologists of the pre- 

 sent day have accepted the principle of Creation by Law, while they wisely 

 abstain from defining its method, or fixing the precise process by vrhich new 

 species are originated. 



I am glad to see that Professor Owen has elsewhere condemned any imaginary 

 scheme by which some anthropoid ape, e. g., the Gorilla, might, by Mr. Darwin's 

 principle of Natural Selection, become a man. He is too well aware that the 

 species is yet unknown to naturalists which is sufficiently allied to mankind to 

 have served as its immediate ancestor. No person can seriously think that man- 

 kind, with its peculiarly developed brain, could have been recruited either from 

 Gorillce or Dryoipitheci:\ Those naturalists who assert man's simian origin, 



* The statement made in the "Vestiges" with respect to the periodical difference in the 

 results of the calculating process of Babbage's machine is founded on a mistake. — Ed. Geol. 



f I am most anxious to avoid introducing anatomical subjects, which would be foreign 

 to the pages of the Geologist, but I may take this opportunity of stating my belief based 

 upon constant and careful observation, that the human brain possesses organs — e. g., 

 the " third cerebral lobe," the "posterior cornu," and the "hippocampus minor," which are 

 absent in the brains of the apes. I am aware that several zoologists have lately expressed 

 a contrary opinion, but I cannot refrain from stating the result of my inquiries, although 

 contrary to the theory of transmutation. Truth should be paramount over any preconceived 

 hypothesis. 



VOL. IV. 3 N 



