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THE FEE SENT ASPECT OF INQUIRIES AS TO THE INTRO- 
DUCTION OF GENERA AND SPECIES IN GEOLOGICAL 
TIME. By Principal J. W. Dawson, LL.D., E.R.S., McGill College, 
Montreal, Hon. Foreign Correspondent of the Victoria Institute .* 
HERE can be no doubt that the theory of evolution, more especially 
that phase of it which is advocated by Darwin, has gteatly extended 
its influence, especially among young English and American naturalists, 
within the few past years. We now constantly see reference made to these 
theories, as if they were established principles, applicable without question 
to the explanation of observed facts, while classifications notoriously based 
on these views, and in themselves untrue to nature, have gained currency in 
popular articles and even in text-books. In this way young people are being 
trained to be evolutionists without being aware of it, and will come to regard 
nature wholly through this medium. So strong is this tendency, more 
especially in England, that there is reason to fear that natural history will 
be prostituted to the service of a shallow philosophy, and that our old 
Baconian mode of viewing nature will be quite reversed, so that, instead of 
studying facts in order to arrive at general principles, we shall return to the 
mediaeval plan of setting up dogmas based on authority only, or on meta- 
physical considerations of the most flimsy character, and forcibly twisting 
nature into conformity with their requirements. Thus “ advanced ” views in 
science lend themselves to the destruction of science, and to a return to 
semi-barbarism. 
In these circumstances, the only resource of the true naturalist is an 
appeal to the careful study of groups of animals and plants in their succes- 
sion in geological time. I have myself endeavoured to apply this test in my 
recent report on the Devonian and Silurian flora of Canada, and have shown 
that the succession of Devonian and Carboniferous plants does not- seem 
explicable on the theory of derivation. Still more recently, in a memoir on 
the Post-pliocene deposits of Canada, now in course of publication in the 
Canadian Naturalist , I have by a close and detailed comparison of the 
numerous species of shells found embedded in our clays and gravels, with 
those living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the coasts of Labrador and 
Greenland, shown that it is impossible to suppose that any changes of the 
nature of evolution were in progress ; but on the contrary, that all these 
species have remained the same, even in their varietal changes, from the 
Post-pliocene period until now. Thus the inference is that these species 
* These remarks are from Dr. Dawson’s Annual Address as President 
of the Natural History Society of Montreal, May, 1872. 
