311 
living thing ? A'VTiat makes the beech-tree which I see before 
me a beech-tree rather than an oak ? And why, when we 
have succeeded so far in putting force upon this individuality 
as to constitute the fern-leaved variety, do individual branches 
sometimes revert to the old hereditary type, as I have seen on 
more than one occasion ? 
It must be a very strong ^^sort of holding-togetherness 
which keeps the type dog the same in all the fifty or sixty 
varieties which man has either found or formed, and 
which makes it impossible for the type dog to mingle 
with the type fox; the latter having an eye adapted to 
the twilight, the nocturnal idea cannot harmonise with the 
diurnal. The same in pigeons, flexible as is the pigeon 
nature ; whilst the admirable goose refuses to be mystified and 
remains goose still. But what shall we say to the Lingula, 
which gives its name to the Lingula flags of Wales, and of 
which Murchison says, The genus has, indeed, lived on from 
the Silurian or primaeval days to the present time, though its 
former associates, the graptolites and trilobites, vanished long 
ago from the world.-’^* 
This primseval inhabitant of Wales has refused to mingle 
its nature or to change its type for an incalculable period of 
time. We are here, confessedly, within a measurable distance 
of the beginning of animal life. 
The creatures, according to Genesis, were formed at different 
periods. According to the testimony of the rocks we must 
come to the same conclusion. For do we not judge of the 
relative age of diSerent deposits by the organic remains which 
they enclose ? 
All honour to the Lingula ! but what shall we say about its 
strong individuality of nature ? What caused this sticldng- 
togetherness of its type ? At all events, this bivalvef has con- 
tinued from the very earliest beginning, — a witness against 
the truth of evolution. For why should this type remain 
fixed, and the others develop themselves, even up to man ? 
The geological record is, in this case, too complete for the 
evolutionists. 
It is correct science now to deny all individuality to trees, 
Murchison’s Situria : the. History of the oldest-lcnoivn Bodes containing 
Organic Bemains ” (pp. 40, 41). 
t In order to secure correctness, I wrote to my friend W. Carnithers, 
F.R.S., V.P.L.S., F.G.S., as first-rate authority. He replied, “ The reference 
to the Lingula is quite correct. It would be more correct to call it a 
hrachioijod than a bivalve, for though it has two valves, the name “bivalve” 
does not generally include the hradiioimlaJ' 
