climates, as a sort of secondary instrument, which has a certain action on plants, but has very little effect on man, who knows how to preserve himself from the excesses of temperature.'

Here, of course, the objection would be obvious, first, that very many animals depend altogether on a very high temperature for their existence, as others do on a cold one; and that apes and monkeys, and many other creatures, if placed on the very best recent' soil, in a cold, or even temperate climate, would speedily perish. A high temperature has also produced, or is inseparably connected with, a considerable division of the human race, the Negroes and their kindred tribes. 'But colour,' says M. Trémaux, ' with men, as with many animals, is only the little side of the question.' 'La coloration, chez l'homme, comme chez beaucoup d'animaux, n'est que le petit coté de la question; chez l'homme le teint est le résultat d'une très faible modification de la peau . . . et n'a aucune influence sur la constitution et les facultés' (23). Still, this distinction of colour is sufficient to make a broad division of the human race, and is not such a trifle as M. Trémaux would have us believe. It is a very evident and unquestioned result of temperature, and has produced a marked character, which all mankind has always acknowledged, though they have been slow to perceive in the effect of any soil any mark of diversity, at all comparable to such a distinction.

The general law has, moreover, to be qualified with the effect of frequent crossings, and a change of alimentary productions, which takes place in a sensible degree (assez sensible) between neighbouring countries.'

These two qualifications invalidate the theory; for the

instances would be few indeed, where these crossings did not take place, and where neighbouring tribes did not interchange the productions of the soil. All this, moreover, involves a history of mankind, to be worked out of the imagination; for how did the first stock of men (educed out of a previous stock of superior apes) separate from the first family so as to avoid neighbourhood, crossings, and interchange of food? For it is one part of this Theory, that a Species, to become such truly, must have been long isolated, and have lived long on one soil. When this process has been continued a sufficient time, then the Species is formed, with law of fecundity.

But man sprung from a very superior quadrumanous animal, very far, superior to the gorilla. His history, therefore, and that of his predecessors, with the soil they lived on, &c., &c., have all to be sketched by the imagination-it cannot be a history of facts.

M. Trémaux attributes to the soil some undefined mysterious action, which he does not explain; that it is something more than the difference of the food which it produces, is evident from the following passage.

'L'homme se nourrit de différentes espèces végétales et animales particulières à chacune des grandes divisions continentales. De la parait resulter un ensemble de physionomies propre à chacune de ces divisions, et même une certaine corrélation de forme, mais elle n'empêche nullement l'action du sol de se dessiner nettement sous cette influence particulière' (24).

The action of the soil,' then, is something over and above the action of the food it produces. A principle of transmutation exists in the soil: in the recent soils, the tendency of its action is towards perfection; in the primi

tive soil, it is towards degeneration and debasement. What may be the nature of this action, is not unfolded to us; it is, in fact, the mystery of M. Trémaux's system, and is analogous to the law of development,' and the independent productive power,' of the other writers of this school.

Like the rest of his fellow-labourers, M. Trémaux personifies Nature, and talks of her objects and intentions, as if the various forms of life had all been projected in an antecedent plan.

'Si l'on cherche à créer une nouvelle espèce par le croisement, on échoue; ce qui est bien naturel, puisque, dans la Nature, son but est contraire, c'est à dire qu'il unifie les êtres qui y sont soumis au lieu de les diversifier; en d'autres termes son but est de grouper les êtres en espèces distinctes.... la Nature se refuse à faire une nouvelle espèce' (189).

Now this is remarkable language, as it is precisely that which, as we have seen, Saint Hilaire said he could not use-I cannot make Nature as an intelligent being,' and yet M. Trémaux is strictly of the Material School, no writer can be more so.

All the perfect types of animals have been produced on recent soils. The primitive soil of the first geological ages was composed of disintegrations, effected at one epoch only; the recent soil of our epoch is made of disintegrations, effected during all the geological epochs, the disintegration of the ancient rocks mingled in the soil renders it completely unfit for man (119—20).

Man reaches perfection, or degenerates according to the recent or ancient soil on which he lives; and as soon as he reaches the type proper to the conditions in which he is

existing, he changes no more, as long as the conditions remain the same (121).

In all modifications of the established order of things, Species, fixed till then, may be, and often have been, changed. Let us go back to the epoch, when one of those grand movements took place, of which geology shows us the traces; by means of that law, of which we have estab lished the bases, nothing can be more simple than to comprehend the effect of that new condition.'

'Les êtres les plus parfaits jusqu'alors se transformeront en jouissant de ce nouveau sol; ils acquerront un nouveau degré de perfection, supérieur à ce qui existait antérieurement; nouveau sol, nouveaux êtres' (122).

Of course, if M. Trémaux has laid it down as the basis of his law,' that the soil does transform animals, thus, when the soil is changed, new transformations may be expected. But, 'the basis' is simply assuming the proposition to be proved.

When Species are once formed, it requires particular conditions to bring to perfection the formation of a new Species; it is requisite that not only should the race, which is about to be formed, be isolated from the surplus of its Species; but that it should abide on one sort of soil only, and, moreover, that it should not be of a middle quality, as it would then tend to make the middle type (140).

If beings, which the soil tends to transform and ameliorate, continue to cross with those which belong to soils of less favoured nature, then it will only be able to effect a difference of variety.

If the crossings with the original Species are in any way prevented, the favoured Variety necessarily becomes Species, by continuing to transform itself (141).

*

To account for the lack of intermediate beings, which the records of geology cannot afford us, M. Trémaux affirms that 'the relative epoch of transformation was short [long, says Mr Darwin], that the grouping of distinct Species was soon effected, that the conditions for their geological preservation were unfavourable, because they were on a recent soil, or one subject to elevations and movements-these are the multiplied causes which render so difficult, and almost impossible, the discovery of the intermediate beings between the Species' (147).

And of these multiplied causes, we may safely say, that they are all visionary, and that every one of these conditions' is deduced from the imagination alone, without the support of any known fact. From anything that can appear to the contrary, conditions totally dissimilar are quite as probable, and, as some would say, much more probable. How does M. Trémaux know that the epoch of transformation was short, and that the grouping of distinct Species was soon effected? Mr Darwin would tell a very different story; though it must be freely confessed, that neither of these learned gentlemen can know anything at all about the matter.

The original Species (l'espèce mère) of man was, in the favoured regions, of a greater superiority relatively to the gorilla, than the white man is relatively to the negro: but that Species has disappeared before man, as the red skins of America disappear before the European colonies (258).

It is only in the regions the most favourable for him that the primitive man could exist, more perfect than that

Mr Darwin says, 'the process of Natural Selection is always extremely slow' (114). The disagreement of the Transmutationists on many essential points is very instructive.