CONSTANCY OF SPECIES. 
3.3 
period^ whilst the specific distinctions are 
essential and of perpetual recurrence. 
Hence we advance with firm footstep into 
the domains of the dead, and are able, 
amidst the organisms of the past, to pro¬ 
nounce with confidence concerning the true 
character of the relics, and to declare that 
they are distinct forms, not derived through 
any transmutation of species from others, 
nor were they themselves the progenitors 
in any such fabulous descent. God made 
every living thing in its kind; and in this 
respect, so long as the race exists, as it was 
in the beginning, so it is now, and so it ever 
shall be. There may be a chain of being, 
there may be circles of affinity, there may 
be gradation of type, but the caste of the 
specific distinctions is and ever has been 
an unbroken boundary. 
“ But changeful and unchanged the while 
Your first and perfect form ye show, 
The same that won Eve’s matron smile 
In the world’s opening glow.”— Kehle. 
Having thus referred to structural and 
systematic botany, as far as our subject and 
