CORRESPONDENCE. 
520 
My readers will have read the chapters in which Mr. Darwin lays stress upon 
the enormous lapse of time required for the deposition of the geological strata. 
However they, hke 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 compai'ison with those results which 
astronomical or mathematical science ha.'t arrived at, as to the vast distance 
between our globe and the solar or sidereal systems. In tliis 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 pronounea 
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-kno^vn phenomena* 
of Babbage's calculating machine, lays great stress upon this argument, and I 
confess I am inclined to regai'd it as an approach to triifh. By some originally 
conceived law, consonant with the development of the original type, specie? 
which invariably propagate descendants immediately resembling themselves 
through countless ages, may, after the expii^tion of some given limit of time, or 
under the influence of some unkno-vNai condition, suddenly change then* powei', 
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 abeiTant forms as the Pfe/-0(7ac^/?«i; or the Ornitliorhynchus. Our 
induction is not sufiiciently vast to lay do^^^l general niles 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 tho 
former. It is only by a regard of the question of the origin of species, as ono 
under the influence of some d}Tiamical law, that a solution of this great problem 
can be aiTived at. (Comte. Pliilosophie Positive.) 
In the words of the eminent writer in the" Edinljurgh Review" : " Circumstances 
are conceivable — changes of sun'ounding influences, the operation of some inter- 
miitant law at long intervals, like that of the calculating machine quoted by tho 
author of ' Vestiges,' under which the monad might go on splitting up into 
monatJf the gregarina might go on breeding gregariiifp, the cercaria cercariw, &c., 
and thus four or five not merely different specific, but different generic and 
ordinal forms, zoologically N-iewed, might all diverge from an antecedent quito 
distinct form." 
Mr. Da^^d Page, in his recently published little work on the " World's Lifo- 
System," exhibited the spirit in which the advanced palaeontologists of the pre- 
sent day have accepted the principle of Creation by Law, while they >visely 
abstain ft-om defining its method, or fixing the precise process by \» hich now 
species are originated. 
I am glad to see that Professor Owen has elsewhere condemned any imaginaiy 
scheme by which some anthropoid ape, c. 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 pecuhai-ly developed brain, could have been recruited either from 
Oorillce or Dryopitheci.f Those naturalists who assert man's simian origin, 
• The statement made in the "Vc-tiges" with respect to the periodical difference in tho 
results of the calculPting process of Babbapfe's machine is founded on a mistake.— Ed. Gsol. 
t 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 obser\'ation, that the hmnan ])rain possesses organs — e. g., 
the " third cerebral lobe," the "posterior comu," and the *' hippocampus minor," which are 
absent in the brains of the apes. I am aware that several zoologists have lately expressed 
a contrar}- opinion, but I cannot refrain from stating the result of my iu(iuines, although 
contrary to the theorj-- of transmutation. Truth should be poramoiuit over any preconceived 
hypothesis. 
VOL. IV. :3 N 
