August i, 1885.] The Australasian Scientific Magazine. 5 
between reptile and bird, and to show that animals may acquire develop- 
ment characters of a higher group.” 
Bishop Butler says that “We are placed in the middle of a scheme — 
not a fixed, but a progressive one — everyway incomprehensible — incom- 
prehensible in a measure equally with respect to what has been, what now 
is, and what shall be hereafter.” 
“ There are traces,” says Professor Sedgwick, “ in the old deposits of 
the earth of an organic progress amongst the successive forms of life;” 
whilst Owen saw the connection of descent from the Ichthyosaurus to 
Man, he deems the influence of circumstances to be decisive ; and yet he 
says, “ I deem an innate tendency to deviate from the parental type, 
operating through periods of adequate duration, to be the most probable 
natural way of the secondary law, whereby species have been derived one 
from the other.” Referring to Lamarck, I read, “Nature exhibits living 
beings, merely as individuals, succeeding one another in generations, 
species having only a relative stability, immutable.” 
The metamorphoses which are going on in the vegetable, as distinguished 
from animal metamorphoses, are only by an addition of new parts to the 
old ones. In animals, however, the whole body is transformed in such a 
manner that all the existing, or component parts, contribute to the forma- 
tion of the modified body. 
The nature, the duration, and the importance of metamorphoses, and 
also the epoch at which they take place, are infinitely varied. 
By the study of the remains of our brother animals, we are led to 
perceive there has been a replacing of their forms, some were ephemeral, 
others more persistent ; whilst in all there has been a singular departure 
from the typical structure of reptiles amongst old forms, when compared 
with recent or living representatives of the same class. 
Professor Murchison (Ann. Address) says “ We have been obliged to 
give up the theory of great breaks between successive formations. We 
find a gradual passage from one geological formation to another, a gradual 
dying out of pre-existing forms of life, and the gradual introduction of 
newer.” 
We may, however, state that there is every evidence of a continuous 
operation of Nature’s law, from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea, 
under its ancient Ichthyc garment, until it assumed the glorious apparel 
of the upright arboreal savage, when nature broke the die, and left us 
slaves to circumstances 
