2io Biological Controversy and its Laws. [April, 
adt of Divine intervention, and endowed once for all with 
its present form, powers, and habits, and has been allotted to 
some particular district, there to exercise a given function 
for which it is especially adapted. He is therefore an 
Evolutionist as decidedly as Lamarck or Darwin, and is 
necessarily at issue with all who oppose the doftrine of 
Evolution in toto. 
Whilst holding that species are mutable, he contends that 
their changes are not necessarily and invariably gradual, but 
may have been sudden. Borrowing the terms from geology, 
he is not a “ uniformitarian,” but a “ catastrophist.” The 
cause of such changes he considers to be not “ natural 
selection,” a hypothesis which he dismisses as puerile ; 
not sexual selection ; not the influence of changing climate, 
diet, and other external causes ; not to the efforts of animals 
to adapt themselves to modified circumstances; but to a 
complex of agencies, internal and external, which might 
almost be designated “ things in general,” and of which the 
author himself, being only able to shadow forth his meaning 
in metaphorical language, has not, probably, the most dis- 
tindft conception. 
The first objection to Mr. Mivart’s views is one which has 
often been urged against Evolution in general, but which is 
exceptionally formidable to the theory of sudden modifica- 
tions. The champions of the Old Zoology are accustomed 
to say that no change of species has ever yet been actually 
observed ; that animals constantly give birth to young in 
their own likeness ; and that, arguing from the known to 
the unknown, such must have been the case from the crea- 
tion of the world, or at least from the dawn of the present 
order of things, whatever that may mean. To this objection 
Darwin and Wallace, and all who hold that the difference 
between species and species has been produced by gradual 
divergence, have a ready answer. “ The variation,” they 
may say, “ visible in the life-time of an observer is so 
trifling as to escape notice.” To borrow an illustration from 
the author of the “ Vestiges,” as well might an ephemeron 
deny the development of the frog from the tadpole state, 
because during his life-time and within the range of the tra- 
ditions of his ancestors the tadpoles in the pool had remained 
tailed creatures, breathing through gills. But such a reply 
is scarcely possible for Mr. Mivart. The appearance of a 
new mammal, bird, reptile, perhaps we may even add 
insert, would at once attradl attention in any civilised 
country, often even among barbarians. Can Mr. Mivart 
adduce an instance in point ? We know that species are 
