zz^^ti^MM, 
REVIEW. 
be a mere animal, possessed of no immortal soul, and as irre- 
sponsible for bis actions to the God before whose bar he is, in 
consequence, never to appear, as his presumed relatives and 
progenitors, the beasts that perish. Nor will it do to attempt 
escapmg from the difficulty bj' alleg:ing that God at some certain 
link in the chain mti/hl have converted a mortal creature into an 
immortal existence, by breathing into it a *' living soul ;" seeing 
that a renunciation of any such direct influence on the part of 
Deity in the work of creation, forms the prominent and 
characteristic feature of the scheme— nay, that it constitutes the 
very nucleus round which the scheme has originated. And 
thus, though the development theory* be not atheistic, it is at 
least practically tantamount to atheism."' 
The author mamtains that, in order to establish the 
truth of the Development theory, the geological evi- 
dence regarding it should run thus : — the earlier fossils 
ought to be very small in size, and very low in organi- 
zation. About a couple of hundi'cd pages of the book 
furnish a reply to the question, What are the facts? in 
reference to this matter ; and negative evidence to a 
large extent is adduced. But wo must turn to the Flora 
ah'eady alluded to. 
" I have said that the curiously-mixed, semi-marine, semi- 
lacustrine flora of the Lake of Stennis became associated in my 
mind, like the ancient Asierolepis of Stromness, with the deve- 
lopment hj'pothesis. The fossil represents not inadequately the 
geologic evidence on the question ; the mixed vegetation of the 
lake may be regarded as forming a portion of the phytological 
evidence. ' AH life,' says Oken, Ms from the sea. "Where the 
sea organism, by self-elevation, succeeds in attaining into form, 
there issues forth from it a higher organism. , . . The first 
organic forms, whether plants or animals, emerged from the 
shallow parts of the sea.' " 
The same views of the origin of terrestrial vegeta- 
tion are held by Oken and the author of the " Vestiges." 
They agree in holding that the plants of the land ex- 
isted in their first condition as weeds of the sea. 
"But what does experience say regarding the transmutative 
conversion of a marine into a terresti'ial vegetation — that expe- 
rience upon which the sceptic founds so much? As I walked 
along the green edge of the Lake of Stennis, selvaged by the 
line of detached weeds with which a recent gale had strewed its 
shores, and marked that for the flrst few miles the accumulation 
consisted of marine algce, here and there mixed with tufts of 
stunted reeds and rushes, and that, as I receded from the sea, it 
was the algte that became stunted and dwarfish, and that the 
reeds, aquatic gi'asses, and rushes, grown greatly more bulky in 
mass, were also more fully developed individually, till at length 
the marine vegetation disappeared, and the vegetable debris of 
the shore became purely lacustrine, I asked myself, whether 
here, if anywhere, a transition flora between lake and sea ought 
not to be found? For many thousand years, ere the tall grey 
obelisks of Stennis had been torn from the quarrj', or laid down 
in mystic circle on their flat promontories, had this lake admitted 
the waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches, and 
fresh in its higher. And during tliis protracted period had its 
quiet well-sheltered bottom been exposed to no disturbing in- 
fluences through which the delicate process of transmutation 
could have been marred or arrested. Here then, if in any cir- 
cumstances, ought we to have had, in the broad permanently 
brackish reaches, at least indications of a vegetation interme- 
diate in its nature between the monocotyledons of the lake, and 
the algiE of the sea ; and yet not a vestige of such an interme- 
diate vegetation could I find among the up-piled debris of the 
mixed floras, marine and lacustrine. The lake possesses no 
such intermediate vegetation. As the water freshens in its 
middle reaches, the algaj become dwarfish and ill-developed; 
one species after another ceases to appear, as the habitat be- 
• The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are gi-eatly 
more fmnk than those of oui' own country regarding the " life after 
death," and what man has to expect from it. The individual, they tell »is, 
perishes forever; but then out of his remains there spring up other 
vitalities. 
comes wholly unfavourable to it ; xmtil at length we find, 
instead of the brown, rootless, flowerlcss fucoids and confervce 
of the ocean, the green, rooted, flower-bearing flags, rushes, 
and aquatic gi-asses of the fresh water. Many thousands of 
years have failed to originate a single intermediate plant. And 
such, tested by a singularly extensive experience, is the general 
e\idence." . . . 
" While there is thus a vegetation intermediate in place be- 
tween the land and the sea, we find, as if it had been selected 
purposely to confound the transmutation theoi^, that it is in no 
degree intermediate in character. For, while it is chiefly 
marine weeds of the lower division of the confervse that creep 
upwards from the sea to meet the vegetation of the land, it is 
chiefly terrestrial plants of the higher division of the dicotyle- 
dons that creep downwards from the land to meet the vegetation 
of the sea. The salt-worts, the glass-worts, the arenaria, the 
thrift, and the scurvy-grass are all dicotyledonous plants. 
Nature draws a deeply marked line of division where the require- 
ments of the transmutative hypothesis would demand the nicely 
gi'aduated softness of a shaded one ; and, addressing the strongly 
marked floras on either hand, even more sternly than the waves 
themselves, demands that to a certain definite bourne should 
they come, and no further." 
" It is not true that human observation has not been spread 
over a period sufficiently extended to furnish the necessary data 
for testing the development hypothesis. In one special walk- 
that which bears on the supposed ti'ansmutation of alga; into 
terrestrial plants — human observation has been spread over 
what is strictly analogous to millions of years. For extent of 
space in this matter is exactly correspondent with duration of 
time. No man, in this late period of the world's history, attains 
to the age of five hxmdred years ; and as some of our larger 
English oaks have been known to increase in bulk of trunk and 
extent of bough for five centuries together, no man can possibly 
have seen the same huge oak pass, according to Cowper, 
through its various stages of " treesliip"— 
" First a seedling hid in grass ; 
Then twig ; then sapling ; aiid as centurj' rolls 
Slow alter century, a giant hulk 
Of girth euoraious, with moss-cushioned roots 
Uphcav'd above the soil, and sides embossed 
■\Vith prominent wens glohosc. 
" But though no man lives thi'oughout five hundred years of 
time, he can trace, by passing in some of the English forests 
through five hundred yards of space, the history of the oak in all 
its stages of gi-owth, as eon-ectly as if he did live thi'oughout the 
five hundred years. Oaks, in the space of a few hundred yards, 
may be seen in every stage of growth, from the newly burst 
acorn, that presents to the light its two fleshy lobes, with the 
first tender rudiments of a leaflet between, up to the giant of the 
forest, in the hollow of whose trunk the red deer may shelter. 
The fact of the development of the oak from the minute two- 
lobed seedling of a week's growth, up to the gigantic tree of five 
centuries, is as capable of being demonstrated by observation 
spread over five hundred yards of space, as by observation spread 
over five hundred years of time. ^Vnd be it remembered that 
the sea-coasts of the world are several hundred thousand miles 
in extent. Europe is by far the smallest of the earth's four 
large divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion to its size, by a 
gi'eater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the 
sea-coasts of Europe alone, including those of its islands, exceed 
twenty-five thousand miles. We have results before us, in this 
extent of space, identical with those of many himdred thousand 
years of time ; and if terrestrial plants were as certainly deve- 
lopments of the low plants of the sea, as the huge oak is a deve- 
lopment of the uumature seedling just sprung from the acorn, so 
vast a stretch of sea-coast could not fail to present us with the 
intermediate vegetation in all its stages. But the sea-coasts fail 
to exhibit even a vestige of the intermediate vegetation. Ex- 
perience, spread over an extent of space analogous to millions 
of years of time, does not furnish, in this department, a single 
fact corroborative of the development theory, but, on the con- 
trary, many hundreds of facts that bear directly against it." 
"We cannot, in these fragmentary extracts, convey a 
complete ^^e^v of Mr. Miller's argiiments, for which the 
book must be considted. Oiu* quotations, however, 
I 
