Part 18 (1/2)

I-3. ”Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens; quae formae secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at sibi semper similes.”--Linn. Phil. Bot., 99, 157.

I-4. Aga.s.siz, ”Essay on Cla.s.sification; Contributions to Natural History,”

p. 132, et seq.

I-5. As to this, Darwin remarks that he can only hope to see the law hereafter proved true (p. 449); and p. 338: ”Aga.s.siz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the same cla.s.ses; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. I must follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is very far from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at least in regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each other within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Aga.s.siz accords well with the theory of natural selection.”

I-6. Op. cit., p. 131.--One or two Bridgewater Treatises, and most modern works upon natural theology, should have rendered the evidences of thought in inorganic Nature not ”unexpected.”

I-7. Volume xvii. (2), 1854, p. 13.

I-8. We suspect that this is not an ultimate fact, but a natural consequence of inheritance--the inheritance of disease or of tendency to disease, which close interbreeding perpetuates and acc.u.mulates, but wide breeding may neutralize or eliminate.

I-9. The rules and processes of breeders of animals, and their results, are so familiar that they need not be particularized. Less is popularly known about the production of vegetable races. We refer our readers back to this Journal, vol. xxvii., pp. 440--442 (May, 1859), for an abstract of the papers of M. Vilmorin upon this subject.

I-10. Quadrupeds of America,” vol. ii., p. 239.

I-11. ”Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” vol. iv., p. 178.

I-12. Owen adds a third, viz., vegetative repet.i.tion; but this, in the vegetable kingdom, is simply unity of type.

I-13. ”Contributions to Natural History of America,” vol. i., pp. 127--131.

I-14. Op. cit., p. 130.

II-1. To parry an adversary's thrust at a vulnerable part, or to show that it need not be fatal, is an incomplete defense. If the discussion had gone on, it might, perhaps, have been made to appear that the Darwinian hypothesis, so far from involving the idea of necessity (except in the sense that everything is of necessity), was based upon the opposite idea, that of contingency.

III-1. Vide ”Proceedings of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science,” 1859, and London Athenoeum, pa.s.sim. It appears to be conceded that these ”celts” or stone knives are artificial productions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc.

III-2. See ”Correspondence of M. Nickles,” in American Journal of Science and Arts, for March, 1860.

III-3. See Morlot, ”Some General Views on Archaeology,” in American Journal of Science and Arts, for January, 186o, translated from ”Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise,” 1859.

III-4. Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the princ.i.p.al a.n.a.logies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended: ”But this inference is chiefly grounded on a.n.a.logy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great cla.s.s, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of h.o.m.ology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent.”

III-5. In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, March, 1860.

III-6. This we learn from his very interesting article, ”De la Question de l'Homme Fossile,” in the same (March) number of the Biblioteque Universelle. (See, also, the same author's ”Note sur la Periode Quaternaire ou Diluvienne, consideree dans ses Rapports avec l'Epoque Actuelle,” in the number for August, 1860, of the same periodical.)

III-7. In Comptes Rendus, Academie des Sciences, February 2, 1857.

III-8. Whatever it may be, it is not ”the h.o.m.oeopathic form of the trans.m.u.tative hypothesis,” as Darwin's is said to be (p. 252, American reprint), so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p.

259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous principle, of an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the supposed trans.m.u.tation is per saltus. ”h.o.m.oeopathic doses of trans.m.u.tation,” indeed! Well, if we really must swallow trans.m.u.tation in some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild h.o.m.oeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the Edinburgh general pract.i.tioner appears to be compounding.

III-9. Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and Christian Examiner, for May, p. 457.

III-10. Page 188, English edition.

III-11. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 147--149.