Now, on such a question as the origin of species, and in an express, forinal, scientific treatise on the subject, the expression of a belief, where one looks for a demonstration, is simply provoking. We are not concerned in the author's beliefs or inclinations to believe. Belief is a state of mind short of actual knowledge. It is a state which may govern action, when based upon a tacit admission of the mind's incompetency to prove a proposition, coupled with submissive acceptance of an authoritative dogma, or worship of a favourite idol of the mind. We readily concede, and it needs, indeed, no ghost to reveal the fact, that the wider the area in which a species may be produced, the more widely it will spread. But we fail to discern its import in respect of the great question at issue. We have read and studied with care most of the monographs conveying the results of close investigations of particular groups of animals, but have not found, what Darwin asserts to be the fact, at least as regards all those investigators of particular groups of animals and plants whose treatises he has read, viz., that their authors are one and all firmly convinced that each of the well-marked forms or species was at the first independently 'created.' Our experience has been that the monographers referred to have rarely committed themselves to any conjectural hypothesis whatever, upon the origin of the species which they have closely studied. Darwin appeals from the experienced naturalists whose 'minds are stocked with a multitude of facts' which he assumes to have been viewed from a point of view opposite to his own,' to the few naturalists endowed with much flexibility of mind,' for a favourable reception of his hypothesis. We must confess that the minds to whose conclusions we incline to bow belong to that truth-loving, truth-seeking, truth-imparting class, which Robert Brown*, Bojanus †, Rudolphi, Cuvier ‡, Ehrenberg §, Herold, Kölliker T, and Siebold, worthily exemplify. The rightly and sagaciously generalising intellect is associated with the power of endurance of continuous and laborious research, exemplarily manifested in such monographs as we have quoted below. Their authors are the men who trouble the intellectual world little with their beliefs, but enrich * Prodromus Flora Nova Hollandiæ. † Anatome Testudinis Europææ. Mémoires pour servir à l'Anatomie des Mollusques. it greatly with their proofs. If close and long-continued research, sustained by the determination to get accurate results, blunted, as Mr. Darwin seems to imply, the far-seeing discovering faculty, then are we driven to this paradox, viz., that the elucidation of the higher problems, nay the highest, in Biology, is to be sought for or expected in the lucubrations of those naturalists whose minds are not weighted or troubled with more than a discursive and superficial knowledge of nature. Lasting and fruitful conclusions have, indeed, hitherto been based only on the possession of knowledge; now we are called upon to accept an hypothesis on the plea of want of knowledge. The geological record, it is averred, is so imperfect! But what human record is not? Especially must the record of past organisms be much less perfect than of present ones. We freely admit it. But when Mr. Darwin, in reference to the absence of the intermediate fossil forms required by his hypothesis and only the zootomical zoologist can approximatively appreciate their immense numbers the countless hosts of transitional links which, on natural selection,' must certainly have existed at one period or another of the world's historywhen Mr. Darwin exclaims what may be, or what may not be, the forms yet forthcoming out of the graveyards of strata, we would reply, that our only ground for prophesying of what may come, is by the analogy of what has come to light. We may expect, e. g., a chambered-shell from a secondary rock; but not the evidence of a creature linking on the cuttle-fish to the lump-fish. Mr. Darwin asks, How is it that varieties, which I have 'called incipient species, become ultimately good and distinct 'species?' To which we rejoin with the question :-Do they become good and distinct species? Is there any one instance proved by observed facts of such transmutation? We have searched the volume in vain for such. When we see the intervals that divide most species from their nearest congeners, in the recent and especially the fossil series, we either doubt the fact of progressive conversion, or, as Mr. Darwin remarks in his letter to Dr. Asa Gray *, one's imagination must fill up very wide 'blanks.' The last ichthyosaurus, by which the genus disappears in the chalk, is hardly distinguishable specifically from the first ichthyosaurus, which abruptly introduces that strange form of sealizard in the lias. The oldest Pterodactyle is as thorough and complete a one as the latest. No contrast can be more remarkable, * Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1858, p. 61. nor, we believe, more instructive, than the abundance of evidence of the various species of ichthyosaurus throughout the marine strata of the oolitic and cretaceous periods, and the utter blank in reference to any form calculated to enlighten us as to whence the ichthyosaurus came, or what it graduated into, before or after those periods. The Enaliosauria of the secondary seas were superseded by the Cetacea of the tertiary ones. Professor Agassiz affirms: 'Between two successive geological periods, changes have taken place among plants and animals. But none of those primordial forms of life which naturalists call species, are known to have changed during any of these periods. It cannot be denied that the species of different successive periods are supposed by some naturalists to derive their distinguishing features from changes which have taken place in those of preceding ages, but this is a mere supposition, supported neither by physiological nor by geological evidence; and the assumption that animals and plants may change in a similar manner during one and the same period is equally gratuitous."* Cuvier adduced the evidence of the birds and beasts which had been preserved in the tombs of Egypt, to prove that no change in their specific characters had taken place during the thousands of years-two, three, or five-which had elapsed, according to the monumental evidence, since the individuals of those species were the subjects of the mummifier's skill. Professor Agassiz adduces evidence to show that there are animals of species now living which have been for a much longer period inhabitants of our globe. 'It has been possible,' he writes, 'to trace the formation and growth of our coral reefs, especially in Florida, with sufficient precision to ascertain that it must take about eight thousand years for one of those coral walls to rise from its foundation to the level of the surface of the ocean. There are around the southernmost extremity of Florida alone, four such reefs, concentric with one another, which can be shown to have grown up one after the other. This gives for the beginning of the first of these reefs an age of over thirty thousand years; and yet the corals by which they were all built up are the same identical species in all of them. These facts, then, furnish as direct evidence as we can obtain in any branch of physical inquiry, that some, at least, of the species of animals now existing, have been in existence over thirty thousand years, and have not undergone the slightest change during the whole of that period.' † To this, of course, the transmutationists reply that a still *Contributions to Natural History: Essay on Classification, † Ibid., p. 53. p. 51. longer period of time might do what thirty thousand years have not done. Professor Baden Powell, for example, affirms :- Though each 'species may have possessed its peculiarities unchanged for a lapse of time, the fact that when long periods are considered, all 'those of our earlier period are replaced by new ones at a later 'period, proves that species change in the end, provided a suffi'ciently long time is granted.' But here lies the fallacy: it merely proves that species are changed, it gives us no evidence as to the mode of change; transmutation, gradual or abrupt, is in this case mere assumption. We have no objection on any score to the change; we have the greatest desire to know how it is brought about. Owen has long stated his belief that some preordained law or secondary cause is operative in bringing about the change; but our knowledge of such law, if such exists, can only be acquired on the prescribed terms. We, therefore, regard the painstaking and minute comparisons by Cuvier of the osteological and every other character that could be tested in the mummified ibis, cat, or crocodile, with those of the species living in his time; and the equally philosophical investigations of the polypes operating at an interval of 30,000 years in the building up of coral reefs, by the profound paleontologist of Neuchatel, as of far higher value in reference to the inductive determination of the question of the origin of species than the speculations of Demaillet, Buffon, Lamarck, Vestiges,' Baden Powell, or Darwin. The essential element in the complex idea of species, as it has been variously framed and defined by naturalists, viz., the bloodrelationship between all the individuals of such species, is annihilated on the hypothesis of natural selection.' According to this view a genus, a family, an order, a class, a sub-kingdom,the individuals severally representing these grades of difference or relationship, - now differ from individuals of the same species only in degree: the species, like every other group, is a mere creature of the brain; it is no longer from nature. With the present evidence from form, structure, and procreative phenomena, of the truth of the opposite proposition, that classifica'tion is the task of science, but species the work of nature,' we believe that this aphorism will endure; we are certain that it has not yet been refuted; and we repeat in the words of Linnæus, Classis et Ordo est sapientiæ, Species naturæ opus.' ART. IX.-1. La Suisse dans la Question de Savoie. Lausanne: 1860. 2. Mémoire sur les Rapports entre la Suisse et la Savoie neutralisée. Berne: 1859. THE HE events which have occurred during the past year in Northern and Central Italy are of a nature to produce not only varied, but conflicting, impressions on the minds of Englishmen. If the opinion we form of them rested entirely on their present and apparent results, there is much to rejoice at, and little to regret, in the consequences of a war which was begun and terminated without our participation and without our approval. We have seen with general satisfaction that Austria has relinquished her hold on a province in which her authority rested entirely on military force, in constant opposition to the feelings of her subjects. No one in this country, any more than in Italy, can regret that the sovereignty of the collateral branches of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, and its own reversionary interests in Central Italy, have lapsed by the desertion and evasion of those Princes whose whole art of government seemed to consist in absolute dependence on their northern ally, and who justly perished in her defeat. With still greater pleasure we have viewed the liberation of the Emilian provinces from the bondage of sacerdotal despotism; and the restoration of the inhabitants of the Romagna to that civil independence which no people in Europe is better able to exercise and to enjoy. But above all these local triumphs we hail with the highest gratification the moderation, the conduct, and the union shown by the Italians themselves during a protracted period of uncertainty, which might at any moment have degenerated into anarchy. Rulers such as Farini and Ricasoli have shown that they are capable of guiding the destinies of a liberated people; and the people of Central Italy have shown that they are willing, obedient, and loyal subjects to governments which deserve their confidence. The principle proclaimed throughout this momentous crisis by the British Governmentthat all the Italians require is to be left to settle their own affairs has been eminently successful, wherever it has been fairly applied: and the people of Italy have not only refuted the predictions of their enemies, but surpassed the hopes of their friends. Thus far the outward aspect of affairs is extremely satisfactory and promising; nor has Italy anything left to desire VOL. CXI. NO. CCXXVI. NN |