63 
typical animals, such as are associated with the il typical 33 
men in their several provinces.” At the foot of that of 
which Cuvier is the head, is the old ox of Europe ( Bos TJrus). 
At the foot of that headed by the Negro is the giraffe. Could 
Agassiz show as clear a distinction between even the carica- 
ture of the black and the portrait of Cuvier as there is between 
the ox and the giraffe, there might be some reason for his 
suggesting that the two belonged to separate primordial forms; 
but, with all the flagrant unfairness of the figures chosen, he 
can do nothing of the kind. 
What then does Agassiz teach us ? He stands opposed to 
Darwin, as we have seen, in an extreme degree ; and I humbly 
think that he strips that naturalist of no small amount of his 
fancies. In his views of the localization of forms of life, 
together with the multitude of facts by which he establishes 
these views, he seems to me to demonstrate that, from the 
first, its great specific distinctions were radical and determined 
— that each species, properly so called, was as perfect at the 
outset as it is now. Geologically he has an immense advan- 
tage over Darwin ; and this advantage increases as discovery 
goes on. The oldest creatures are no longer regarded as 
having had simple organizations, that is, by well-informed 
geologists. As the abodes of living substances become more 
and more explored, too, the old notions of a gradation from 
small to great, and from low to high, are being dissolved. 
Agassiz speaks strongly in this line of thought. He says : 
“ There are other animals in Brazil, low in their class to be 
sure, but yet very important to study embryologically,. on 
account of their relation to extinct types. These are the 
sloths and armadillos — animals of insignificant size in our 
days, but anciently represented in gigantic proportions. The 
Megatherium, the Mylodon, the Megalonyx, were some of 
those immense mammoths. I believe that the embryonic 
changes of the sloths and armadillos will explain the structural 
relations of these huge Edentata and their connection with 
the present ones. South America teems with the fossil bones 
of these animals, which, indeed, penetrated into the northern 
half of the hemisphere as high up as Georgia and Kentucky, 
where their remains have been found.”* It would be very 
difficult to find evidence of the evolution of greater from 
smaller, or of higher from lower forms, in such a field as 
Agassiz thus rapidly surveys. If evolution is there at all, it 
is of small from large, and low from high. 
It is thus that the ideas of these two great men neutralize 
* Travels in Brazil, pp. 24, 25. 
