son not to proceed further with the action, and would compel him to convey the estate to his adversary upon payment of the purchase money. Now that court of law in which Tompson originally proceeded could not have done this. If a hundred Tompsons had bound themselves, in the most solemn obligation, to sell me an estate, there is no court of law in England that could make any one of them do it. If there was only one side to Westminster Hall they might laugh me to scorn; but equity would be the power to bring them to book.

This brings me to the essential difference between law and equity, which I need not be deterred from stating, because every schoolboy is imagined to have it at his fingers' ends. Equity will give you the thing itself for which you have contracted, whereas the law can only give you a pecuniary compensation for the dishonesty of the other party in not fulfilling his contract. When the horse is brought to the water, law, if he is obstinate, can only apply the whip or stop his oats. Equity can and will make him drink. In the law court you obtain damages for breach of contract; in the equity court you are decreed what we call a "specific performance:" for equity considers that as actually performed which is agreed to be done; so that the instant after you have entered into a contract to sell an estate, the court considers the estate as belonging to the purchaser, and the purchasemoney as belonging to you.

would never have a chance of such a droll case as this. If it
were not that a new state of things breeds new varieties of
amusing complications, it would be disappointing to read the
instances in which an agreement to buy may, after all, be held
to be no buying at all. In this case, your heir or devisee of
your real property may be himself fiddled. If the title to the
land, for an instance, should have a flaw in it, though the
party you had bequeathed it to was quite willing to accept it,
equity would say, no. As the testator himself, if he had lived,
might have objected to the flaw, there was no binding con-
tract when he died. He then had no real property, and
therefore did not leave any,-left nothing in fact but personal
property. So if you have left all your personal property, say
fifty pounds' worth, to your servant, he may get all the fifty
thousands which you directed to be spent in land; and your
relative to whom you left that sum get neither land nor cash.
I will give you another case. My Lord St. Leonards has
a friend down in Hampshire,-probably Richard Roe by
name,-who has a tremendous long lease for years of some
property there, so long and at so trifling a rent that I sup-
pose a few pounds would pay the difference of buying it out
and out. Roe has made his will, and left this property to
his second son, the eldest being well provided for. Now,
suppose Roe agrees to pay the few pounds and buy this
estate some day, and he dies; why then his second son will
get nothing; for when his father agreed to buy, equity holds
that he had bought, and this fact turns everything topsy-
turvy. A lease of land for years, however long, is personal
property; land that you have bought is real property. Roe
left nothing to his second son but personal property, there-
fore his second son cannot touch the land. But Roe, perhaps,
avoids this quicksand, and knowingly bequeaths the real
estate,-the right to the land for ever, instead of for years
only; ten to one if he does not then run upon a hidden rock.
The agreement to purchase may not hold good, for any one
of the possible reasons known to my brethren learned in the
law, and deeply versed in the principles of equity. In this
case presto! real becomes personal again. When you began
this paper you might have fancied that Roe's second son
would nevertheless be all right, for if Roe said he should
have it for ever, surely equity would let him have it for years.
But you are beginning, no doubt, to lose all faith in ordinary
sense and common justice. You have doubts upon this point,
and you are right; the bequest was this time of real and not
personal, and the distinction must be rigorously maintained,
for it lies at the root of our happy constitution. Roe's
second son may be at once dispossessed, and ordered off the
land, without a shilling to console him. Roe, however, will
no doubt endeavour to steer clear of all these dangers. He
will get an attorney to draw his will; but it will not surprise
you to learn that your attorney himself may possibly become
bewildered amidst the intricacies of a splendid and compre-
hensive system. My noble and learned instructor tells me
that he could without difficulty run over the names of many
judges and lawyers of note, whose wills made by themselves
have been set aside, or construed so as to defeat every inten
tion which they ever had. So you perceive that law is not
altogether an easy thing, but generally you have a kind of
protection. If a purchaser of an estate, for instance, is
injured by the gross want of skill of his attorney, he may
recover damages of him, but pray do not be too sure. If he
has acted under the advice of counsel, which of course he
has, being easier and being done at your expense, you cannot
touch him. You think, of course, that in that case you
direct all your legal proceedings upon the counsel who
deceived your attorney; but here you are wrong again.
Counsel having no remedy for recovery of their fees (which
for this reason they always take beforehand), they are not, as
I learn from the same high authority, "deemed liable to
their clients for any blunders which they commit, however
gross." You will therefore probably find your remedy of
little use.

Ponder well upon that last maxim if you have any property, for the slightest inattention may overthrow your most cherished plans,-make the labour of your whole life fruitless, or fruitful of nothing for which you would willingly have toiled for an hour. For instance, suppose you had some land which you left by your will to be sold, the money to be given to your son or daughter; now you might, as a good bargain for them, agree with the tenant that he should buy it at a price whenever he pleased. You thus think your son or daughter provided for with either the land or the money at least but you are mistaken. Your tenant has never bought the property; but it is no matter. When you agreed to sell, equity holds that you had sold; so if you die your will is guilty of the absurdity of giving land to your son and daughter when you had not any. But suppose the tenant takes his option, determines to buy, and hands over the money; at least your son and daughter will have the money to come from the sale of the land, which money or land you expressly left them? Nonsense: equity says you had no land, and therefore how could you have any money coming from land? Now you see the value of that distinction between land and other things which we have already glanced at. Your bequest was of real property; the money is personal property, you have no real property,-your son and daughter therefore get neither purchase money nor estate. "Distressing cases of this kind are," I learn "continually happening." A gentleman having bequeathed ten thousand pounds to his younger children will occasionally agree to purchase land. The purchase is in equity already completed. If he dies the land must be paid for. Ten thousand pounds, though left to his younger children, must go for that purpose. You think of course the younger children get the land, which is actually paid for with their money. Not at all. Ten thousand pounds, and land worth that sum, are totally different things. You bequeathed money, not land. The new estate goes then to increase the large fortune of your heir: your younger children are left destitute. A case that "once happened" may be found in my Handy-Book. "A younger brother agreed to buy an estate (I mean land) from his elder brother; the conveyance was accordingly executed, but the money was not paid. The younger brother then made his will, giving his property to his brother, subject to legacies. The will, however, was not executed so as to pass real property (land). Here was a glorious occasion for the unfettered operation of equity and legal distinctions. The younger brother died, and the elder brother took the land as his heir, and also paid himself the purchase money out of the personal If I were to put down all the things of this kind which I property; by which he got both the estate and the purchase have noted on the margin of my Handy-Book, the reader money for it." If a man to whom you had left five pounds was would probably give it up at this point, and never read the entitled to five pounds' worth of anything, or the proceeds of rest. He has, no doubt, resolved to have nothing to do with the sale of five pounds' worth of anything you possessed, you | land, and therefore can have no interest in knowing that to

buy or sell a hundred pounds' worth of that article as easily as to buy or sell a hundred pounds in the three per cents., or a picture worth a hundred pounds, is a thing impossible, and never to become possible, in the opinion of high legal authorities, while land shall be; nor can he want to know how the lender of money on land takes absolute interest, according to the law, while according to equity the borrower is still the owner to all intents and purposes; nor any other of the ingenious doctrines, chiefly concerning real property, which legal gentlemen delight to uphold and cherish.

JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES CONTROVERSY.

LINNEUS v. LAMARCK.

We had intended in this article to have presented our readers with a brief resumé of Mr. Darwin's recently published views on this subject, together with a copious summary of all the antagonistic opinions; but as so much and serious difference prevails regarding them, we think it will conduce much to the proper understanding of the real merits of the arguments on both sides if we devote all our available space in this number of the REGISTER to a consideration of the condition of the question before the promulgation of Mr. Darwin's theory.

The hosts of individual plants and animals at any one moment living on the surface of our globe defy enumeration; and looking to the past and to the future, and straining our minds in the endeavour to imagine the myriads of generations that have been, and are yet to be, the total of that countless multitude is utterly inconceivable. For so mighty a census, if it should be compiled, "scarcely the world itself" would 66 contain the books that should be written."

In tutored man's first reasonings and speech concerning these innumerable hosts, he must early have had recourse to the equivalents of such collective terms as grass," and "herb," and "tree;" or as the "fish of the sea," the "fowl of the air," "cattle," and the "beast of the earth;" and when compelled by closer necessity, in regard to the plants and animals immediately around him, whether useful or not, he would soon come to give to particular groups of closely corresponding individuals a common name, such, for example, as would serve to distinguish an "olive" from any other leaf, and a "raven " from a "dove."

Taking facts as they lay before him, the narrowest fundamental groups recognised by man, in this primitive condition of nomenclature, would assuredly be defined, first by likeness, and then by a community of descent; and although, in later ages, even down to our own time, science, taking wider and grander flights, has perceived the inadequacy of the earlier collective terms correctly to designate the primary subdivisions of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and has for her convenience invented the subordinated groups of classes, orders, families, and genera, still, in regard to her smallest and most limited groups, consisting of the individuals of each proper kind of plant and animal, she has, in the main, adhered to the primitive suggestions of the earliest experience, and has defined those groups, henceforth entitled "species," to be "assemblages of like individuals produced by other individuals like them" (Lamarck). Thus it would appear that both the vulgar names due to common observation, and the "specific" scientific appellations given to the different kinds of plants and animals, have been equally founded on the observed existence, amongst entire groups of individuals, of the two-fold relationship of "similitude" and "descent."

In modern science, however, the similitude in question refers not merely to external characters, but also to internal structure, and the mode of development of the whole; and, further, it is a relative, and not an absolute, likeness which is implied by it. For within the pale of scientific resemblance we find included not only the differences of sex, of age, and of the individual, and it is of the essence of individuality to differ, visibly as in size, form, or colour, or invisibly as in constitution or character,-but also those wider transient or comparatively persistent deviations from a common form

which constitute accidental monstrosities, casual varieties, permanent varieties, breeds or races.

On the other hand, the idea of "descent" has usually been interpreted in a stricter, nay, an absolute sense; so that in reference to animals, it has been remarked, that all the indi. viduals of one species, however much they may vary,--and of necessity they must vary,-have a blood-relationship to one another. Pursuing, indeed, this idea to its apparently legitimate goal, the minds of most naturalists have been led to conceive that every true species forms, as it has been expressed, a natural unit, wholly independent of the rest, and springing in strict genealogical succession from some primitive parent stock, that is, from a single plant or animal, or from a pair, according to the mode of its propagation. Unable to reason further, or ascend beyond these primitive founders of species, most naturalists have been content to refer their origin to some special but entirely unknown creative process or act of Deity, involving not a suspension or contravention of the ordinary laws of nature, but some superadded action of the great Creator of all things whatsoever. So strongly has this postulate as to the direct creation of species always recommended itself to the scientific mind, that ever since natural history has been systematically cultivated, the leading authorities, with Cuvier at their head, have acquiesced in the famous axiom of Linnæus, the acknowledged founder of modern classification, that whilst "the class and order are the work of science, species are of nature." Nor has it been thought of little moment, that such a doctrine of the origin of species appeared at least to be consistent with the scriptural narrative of the genesis of living things, in which both plants and animals are recorded as having been primitively "brought forth" each after its "kind," with the subsequent command to "multiply" and fill the earth.

It must have been early noticed by mankind, that, in a certain few cases, animals obviously different but yet closely allied, would occasionally unite and produce offspring called muies, after the earliest and most familiar examples resulting from crosses between the horse and ass. Such offspring are now scientifically named hybrids; and it was soon observed that although these mules or hybrids would sometimes breed with either parent stock, yet they were, and to the present day the fact appears to be the same,-always absolutely infertile inter se,-as if a seal had thus been set to the limits of species, and their indiscriminate intermixture had been for bidden. More than this, it was discovered that when hybrids bred with either parent stock, their offspring quickly reverted to that particular type.

From all the preceding facts, it seemed just to conclude that "natural species," defined by relative likeness, absolute kinship, and the hereditary quality of an incapacity to intermix and produce offspring fertile inter se, must be regarded as distinct and, relatively to one another, immutable units. Variable as they might be, and inheritable as might be their variations, species themselves were still, so far as facts showed, immutable; the utmost that Cuvier would allow was that they might "vary to a certain point;" and as if to show that even those most persistent varieties,-named breeds or races,were still materially different from true species, it was found that they could intercross with one another, as well as with either parent stock, with the uniform result of producing offspring fertile inter se, from all possible combinations within the species; the ultimate result of all such intra-specific breedings being a common tendency to revert to the original stock, as if this, in its widest divarications, continued to assert its still inherent quality of immutability.

The remarkable facts connected with the distribution of the different species of animals and plants over the surface of the earth,-some widely scattered, others narrowly circumscribed, -have recently attracted much scientific attention; and it has been almost unanimously agreed that the great disturbing influences which, as geology evidently reveals, have acted on the surface and climate of our globe, together with the ordinary agencies of migration and transport, are fully adequate to account for all the peculiarities of geographical distribution in the flora and fauna of the distant regions of the earth, even on the theory of the independent origin of species from a single stock or pair. Professor Agassiz stands almost,

if not quite, alone, in believing that, in regard to some species, several independent centres of creation must be assumed.

When geological researches showed in the several strata of the globe the fossilized remains of many successions of different specific forms of plants and animals, it became necessary to admit that as species had originated, so had they also become extinct in time; and, taking it as a postulate that they were distinct and independent existences in nature, it was further necessary to assume that at certain epochs, associated in all probability with remarkable changes, either gradual or sudden, in the physical conditions of the surface, atmosphere, or climate of our planet, the older species either gradually or suddenly disappeared, and gave place to others, originating according to similar but unknown creative processes or acts, -of the final one of which man himself appeared to be the subject.

As the catalogues of known species, living and extinct, continued to increase, and as the knowledge of the internal structure and mode of development of plants and animals continued to advance, their mutual affinities became more and more apparent ; and many successive attempts were made to classify them in more and more naturally associated groups. Species, and even genera, which had apparently stood isolated, fell into rank as new discoveries were made, and many gaps in the mighty scheme of organic creation, which had long been evident, were sooner or later filled up.

Transcendental or philosophical anatomy now aimed at penetrating the plans of Providence, by attempting to reveal the fundamental motives and laws of organization. The great generalization was reached that the various kinds of plants and animals are constructed on a few great types. Looking to their form and structure, there was recognised not only the principles of fitness and adaptation to purpose, in accordance with a notion of final causes, but a unity of design, running through, controlling, and commanding all; and the human imagination, rising with its vast theme, strove to realize socalled archetypal ideas, according to which it pictured to itself the grand and magnificent scheme of the created organic world as having been founded and wrought out.

definable limits, so that natural species, though necessarily variable, are nevertheless essentially distinct and immutable, or incapable of passing into one another.

The corporate opinions, which we have thus rapidly sketched, having for their basis the fundamental doctrine of the independent creation, the strict genealogical relationship, the perfect discreteness, and the immutability of species, still leave the origin of species an unexplained mystery. Whence, when, where, and how have the parents of species been formed? It may well be that these questions shall on this earth never be solved. Nevertheless, ever since science has pursued her strict inductive method, there always have been, and there still are, minds which will attempt its explanation, and which at all events have felt or feel that no modification, extension, or adaptation of the theory of independent creative acts hitherto suggested, affords a satisfactory solution of that greatest question of questions in biology, the origin of species, their real value and position in the scheme of nature.

In pursuance of our plan, we now proceed to analyze the various opinions of such naturalists. It has been pointed out truly enough that the hypothesis of the independent creation of species, which was adopted, with all its consequences, by Linnæus, supposes the occurrence of extraordinary phenomena or events out of, though not contrary to, the usual course of nature, which not only surpass our comprehension, but are incapable of being directly proved.

For, in the first place, it is said we are at a loss to conceive under what conditions, in what nidus, and in what form, an independently created species can arise. Is it, it is asked, created at once perfect and adult, or young, or as a seed, or as an egg, or ovum ? And in the latter case, how is it protected and nourished in its development? Are the two sexes, where these are essential, created simultaneously? And is the direct creative act limited to the formation of a single pair, or as Agassiz has maintained, in regard to certain species, are several or many pairs of progenitors so directly created? And when to these questions it is replied, that it is not given to man to explain a mystery, and that science can no more fathom the cause and origin of life, than she can disclose the cause or conceive the commencement of the phenomena which are recognised as due to the attraction of gravitation, of the origin of species by independent creative acts is one which is and must ever remain destitute of direct proof, either on contemporary or on recorded evidence; for not only has no one ever seen or is ever likely to see a new species created, but if any actually new plant or animal did appear in some previously well-searched locality, it would at once be regarded rather as the descendant of some hitherto unnoticed or undetected progenitor, than as the representative of a species entirely new to the world.

But beyond the undoubted impossibility of establishing the theory of the independent creation of species as scientific doctrine resting on positive evidence,-which, of course, if producible, would determine the question for ever,— another blow has been indirectly aimed at this theory, by arguments tending to show that the idea of "species" as independent units or distinct realities existing in nature is a fallacy of the human mind.

In the gradual and beautiful development and growth of organic forms from the parent seed or egg, men thought they could trace the workings of an organizing force or forces, acting, in that development, in subordination to certain pre-it is urged in the second place, that, at any rate, the theory conceived ideas of pre-ordained forms,-illustrating the views of Plato, and harmonizing with the words in Genesis, as to the creation of "every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." The germ-cell, whether of plants or animals, is found in all cases to consist of a microscopic membranous vesicle, or organic sphere, having faintly granular contents. In this, when fertilized or fecundated after nature's mysterious way, the embryonic trace soon commences to be formed, exhibiting, first, an axial growth, with which there is usually associated a process of transverse segmentation, by which the repetition of similar parts is produced; and, secondly, a peripheral growth, either general, for the mere thickening of the axis, or in many definite directions, so as to produce a spiral arrangement, or two-sided, so as to give rise to a bilateral symmetry. All this manifests what has been termed, by Owen, a general, organic, polar force, common to all organic formative processes, and likened in its lowest manifestations, as in the production of the pieces of the skin of a star-fish, to a sort of chemical attraction. But concurrently with these phenomena of a generalized development is observed the tendency of certain parts of each growing organism to become specialized in their own way, after the parental pattern; indicating, it is thought, a special organic force, inheritable and inherited by successive generations of each specific form of plant or animal, and guiding or controlling the general, organic, polar force, so as to mould or model the growing individual, to specialize its parts to particular shapes and for particular uses, and stamp the entire form with that specific likeness which, as we have already said, is handed down from one generation to another. And although this assumed specific formative force is admitted to be subject to many and often striking disturbances and oscillations, still these, like the swingings of a pendulum, are supposed to have

In consequence of the plasticity of organic forms constantly exemplified in the varieties which they produce within themselves, and of the close approximation of neighbouring species to each other, it becomes difficult in many departments of natural history to define the limits of certain supposed specific groups, especially when these are scattered over large areas of the globe, or to say which of certain other groups shall be considered as true species, and which as varieties only. Owing to this difficulty, indeed, different botanists vary in their estimate of the number of existing species of flowering plants as widely as from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand, whilst in some divisions of the animal kingdom, as in the class of insects, similar discrepancies of definition and enumeration prevail. The grounds on which species have been separated, and the characters by which they have been defined, are, it is alleged, sometimes apparently so arbitrary, and frequently so slight and unim

OCT. 1860.]

LITERATURE, THE SCIENCES, AND THE ARTS.

portant, that we need not marvel that philosophical naturalists,
passing beyond the object of mere classifiers, have asked
what, after all, is the value of this term "species," about
which we are all of us arguing? and what is the use of
consuming our time in the vague pursuit of what may be
an indefinable and shadowy unreality? Many, indeed, have
have no more real existence in
contended that "species
nature than genera, or orders, or classes; that like them,
though narrower, they are still artificial groups, and that the
term itself is a mere abstract, collective, or categorical term,
like genus, order, and class, embracing a number of more or
less like individuals,-those individuals being, after all, the
only true "natural units" with which the biologist has to

deal.

Regarded from this point of view, too, it is maintained that the notion of the immutability of species itself becomes shaken, and their possible mutability, an idea now looming in the field of speculation, becomes, if not capable of proof, at least more presentable as an hypothesis to the mind. For once destroy the notion of species as a reality in nature, or as a compact, shut in, group of like individuals lineally descended from like progenitors, and leave it a mere term or title attached to a cluster of individual plants and animals brought together in one category by man, and the actual barriers between all species being thrown down, it becomes easier to conceive that the individuals of those groups, which are confessedly liable to change, may so change as to pass from one group to another, or at all events give rise to new groups, that is, to new species. And then, it is argued, supposing species to be more or less mutable, why may they not have been derived one from the other, by the operation of some secondary laws, working as part of a great scheme, perhaps of organic descent, instead of having been independently created according to a pre-arranged plan. Thus, indeed, there have arisen from time to time in the scientific world various forms of speculation as to the origin of species, which may be entitled in the mass "derivative hypotheses of the origin of species," as distinguished from the time-honoured doctrine, or "independent creative hypothesis." As Linnæus represents the latter, so Lamarck may be regarded as typifying the former views; and, accordingly, we have placed these two great names in opposition at the head of the present article, as broadly and conveniently indicating the two very opposite views considered in it. But there are many varieties of the derivative hypothesis," of which we must now speak more particularly.

sequent wasting of certain parts would perhaps lead to others
being more used and developed. He supposed that the whole
series of animals commenced from two primordial stocks,
viz., a worm, and an infusorial animalcule, the earliest be-
ginnings of each of which originated in a direct or spontaneous
generation! The former line he imagined to pass through
worms, barnacles, and shell-fish; and the latter through the
infusorial monad, polypes, star-fish, insects, spiders, and
crabs,-both to meet in the fishes, from which the vertebrata,
including man, were in gradual procession derived. Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, and the transcendental school of zoologists
generally, have delighted also in putting forth as a truth
Buffon, it may be
and an antithesis, the sounding phrase of a successive de-
velopment from a "monad to a man.'
remarked, had already, in 1766, expressed an opinion that the
known varieties of species might possibly be regarded as an
indication of their immutability in time; and he showed how
all the mammalia might be referred to a comparatively few
stocks. He seemed inclined to an opinion, contrary to that of
Demaillet, Lamarck, St. Hilaire, and others, that, sometimes
at any rate, the process of transmutation might take place in
a downward sense, or by degeneration, according to which a
bear might become a seal, and a seal a whale; or a human
The theory of the author of Vestiges of Creation (1816)
being, it might be supposed, would become an ape.
presents us with another form of the derivative hypothesis of
the origin of species. Seizing hold of the beautiful disco-
veries that in the primary groups of animals the embryos of
the higher species pass through a series of transitional stages
corresponding with the permanent or adult conditions of
species lower in the scale, he conceived that he saw a pos-
sible mode of origin of such higher species from the inferior
ones, in the occasional occurrence, at rare and distant
intervals, of an arrested development, or of a birth in an
immature condition on the one hand, or of an advanced
development or a retarded birth on the other,-conditions
which, with the subsequent effects of growth to the adult
state, might give rise to a new form, i.e. to a new species.
It also presented itself to his mind as possible, that certain
monstrosities, or well-marked individual peculiarities or
deviations from the parent type, might from time to time be
inherited and handed down so as to engender new species. Ia
this form of the derivative hypothesis, instead of a sudden
individual transmutation, as described by Demaillet, or a
scries of slow transmutations in successive generations, as
taught by Lamarck, there is imagined either a process of
sudden evolution, occurring at long intervals of time, or
It might therefore be designated the develop-
the perpetuation of suddenly occurring deviations or mon-
strosities.
It is scarcely necessary
mental derivative hypothesis, as distinguished from the
older transmutational theories.
to say that none of the above-mentioned attempts to
explain the origin of species from one another have been
regarded by naturalists generally as worthy of ranking evca
as provisional scientific hypotheses. Not only could no true
cause of the assumed change be shown to exist, but no satis-
factory proof could be given of any such changes having been
found. No species could be shown to be undergoing, or to
have undergone, transmutation; or to have given birth, by
any evolutionary process, to a new one. Species, it was
admitted, were undoubtedly variable, and the variations of
specics were undoubtedly inheritable; but species still
appeared to be physiological as well as anatomical or struc
tural entities; for all varieties of species, however bizarre,
are probably universally fertile inter se, and produce a mon
grel offspring, also fertile, not only with the parent stock but
with each other, whilst species are rarely capable of being
crossed, and only occasionally produce a hybrid offspring,
which, though fertile with either parent, is always infertile
inter se; and as no well-authenticated instance could be
adduced of a variety incapable of propagating indefinitely
with any or all of the varieties within its own species, so
The immutability of species, as a
there could be found no example of any two species producing
offspring fertile inter se.
doctrine, remained unshaken; and as to the evolution theory,
where, it was asked, is an example of the developmental
process assumed to take place by it?

In 1748, Demaillet, under the assumed title of Telliamed (which consists of the letters of his real name read backwards), first propounded a theory of the origin of different kinds of animals from one another. He believed in the direct transmutation of individuals, whose organization was supposed to be acted upon from without by altered conditions and influences, and from within by certain instinctive or volitional impulses. To illustrate these views, he supposed the case of a flying fish blown on to land, and by efforts of its own, aided by some response of its internal organic forces, gradually becoming metamorphosed into a bird! And amongst the arguments in favour of such a change, he mentions, besides other fanciful analogies, the fact, that all the bizarre varieties of colour to be met with in the scales of fishes, are matched Half a century later, in 1809, by the plumage of birds! Lamarck, a most profound naturalist, possessing a knowledge of the lower kinds of animals superior to that of Cuvier, gave, in his "Philosophie Zoologique," a more scientific aspect to the transmutation theory. He supposed the necessary metamorphoses to occur not in individuals, but in a succession of individuals, and to be produced by accumulated changes, the result of certain adaptations between long-continued alterations in external conditions, such as heat or cold, dryness or moisture, or other surrounding influences, and continuously inherited internal tendencies and powers of many generations of individuals. Lamarck maintained in particular that the habit of specially using certain parts or organs would induce their greater growth, whilst disuse would cause them to waste; that any such increase of growth would strengthen the habit which induced it, whilst this again would react upon the structure; and that the disuse and con

In the absence of contemporary proof, both theories appealed to unlimited time,-Lamarck expressly demanded long lapses of that element in his speculations. The author of Vestiges lays it down "that though distinctions admitted as specific are not now, to ordinary observation, superable, time may have a power over them." And he further illustrated the predestined exceptional acts of development which, at rare intervals in creation, are supposed by him to give birth to new specific forms, by a reference to the solitary errors committed by the calculating machine of Babbage, after a long record of truthful numbers. In regard to the influence of time, as an element in these calculations, it was maintained by the late Professor Baden Powell that the changes of species observed in different geological epochs show that "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 an earlier period are replaced by new ones at a later period, proves that species change in the end, provided a sufficiently long period of time is granted."

To such arguments it has been replied, that, though the geological facts may be so, the inference sought to be established upon them is unsound; that species have altered, in the sense of replacing one another; but that the mode in which the change has been effected is at present unknown; that it does not follow that they have changed into one another; that the intermediate transitional links necessary to prove the occurrence of such a transmutation are yet wanting; and that it is a mere unfounded assumption, at present, to state without evidence that such a metamophosis has taken place. "No great paleontologist," says Hugh Miller, was ever yet an asserter of the development hypothesis."

Succumbing to the inscrutable perplexities of this vast problem, most naturalists, as it were, passively acquiesced in the old opinions; or preserved an extreme caution, if not an absolute silence upon it.

At this crisis, Messrs. Wallace and Darwin publicly announced their views on the extent and causes of the variation of species; and of the possible existence in nature of a power of producing new ones from those previously existing. Dr. Hooker investigated the problem in the vegetable kingdom; and then appeared Mr. Darwin's very interesting hypothesis of the Origin of Species by "Natural Selection."

The examination of the objections to this we must postpone to a future number. In the meantime, to show the complete frustration of the highest scientific aspirations for a solution of this moot question, we may conclude by stating that Professor Owen, at least as high an authority as can well be quoted, after declaring that the facts of paleontology prove that since the first commencement of organic life upon the globe "the creative force has not deserted the earth," arrives only at the vague conclusion that they also establish "the axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained beginning of living things."

LORD DUNDONALD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.*

THE theorist who delights in tracing idiosyncrasy to descent, in finding explanation of character in conditions of race, has argument and illustration on his side in the case of the famous British seaman here telling his own story, for tradition awards to him something of a viking derivation. Centuries back, a Scandinavian sea-rover settled down in comparatively quiet and private life on the lands of Renfrew and Ayr, and founded the house whose glory culminates in the Professor Owen, a staunch opponent of the transmutational present Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald. For more certain theory, has moreover remarked that "observation of animals records of the family we must come down to later, though in a state of nature is required to show their degree of plasti- still remote periods, to 1262, when a Waldenus de city, or the extent to which varieties do arise;" whereby Coveran, i.e. Cochran, appeared as a witness to a grant of grounds may be had for judging of the amount of change of lands in Argyle; and to 1297, when a William de Coveran which they are capable "according to the principle of a suc-made his submission to Edward I. in the Ragman Roll. cession of varieties in time." Appealing to particular cases, Then we approach the mason chiel," Robert Cochran, he also points out that the most important and distinctive favourite of James III., and by him made Earl of Mar, cruelly structural differences observable between the skeletons of murdered by Douglas " Bell-the-Cat," and other conspirators allied species of monkeys and apes, and between the ourang, about 1460. Charles I. raised Sir William Cochran of Lowchimpanzee, and gorilla, and man, are not such as are appa- den to the peerage, under the title of Lord Cochrane: Charles rently explicable on any known course of change from exter- II. gave the earldom of Dundonald. Meanwhile, and since, nal causes, such as the modification of the forms of the bones the estates steadily ebbed from the family; civil war, rebellion, as a consequence of use or muscular action; for differences confiscation, fines, mortgages, debts, gradually submerged the are to be found in those skeletons, in the production of which whole. The hero of the present volume commenced his no muscular actions could have had any effect. career, the heir to a peerage, without a foot of land to support the dignity,-without so much as an income that would afford him even a simple subsistence.

In spite, then, of this appeal to time, the evolutional and transmutational theories, as hitherto propounded, are generally rejected by scientific zoologists; the closest students of any particular species usually refrain from expressing an opinion of the origin of the species which they know best; and the profoundest naturalists, whilst discussing the subject, avoid lending the sanction of their names to any particular hypothesis.

His father, the ninth earl, was an experimental philosopher, striving strenuously to arrive at certain chemical discoveries, and expending the whole of the little money he possessed with that view. It is only fair to state that his efforts evinced very considerable ingenuity, and that some of his inventions gave valuable promise. Unfortunately, it is always the inventor's fate to sow, while the reaping of the harvest falls to others. The earl's talent did nothing to retrieve the misfortunes of his house; indeed, so straightened became his means, that it was with difficulty any sort of education could be provided for his sons, whose mother, Anna Gilchrist, daughter of Captain Gilchrist, of the Royal Navy, it had been their misfortune to lose in 1784.

But the question of the origin of species is not dead; it only sleeps, ready to be awakened at every successive discovery or advance in zoological or botanical science. The marvellous mode of propagation observed in many of the lower animals, and described under the name of alternate generations, or parthenogenesis, naturally excited some hope that at last the veil of the mystery might be partly raised. There are creatures, from whose ova offspring are hatched Thomas, the eldest son, was born on the 14th of December, wholly unlike the parents, but which by a subsequent pro- 1755, at Annsfield in Lanarkshire. He was originally cess of multiplication produce individuals, of a second gene-destined for the army, but his uncle, the Hon. Captain, ration, which grow like the parents. In many of these curious cases the parent, and offspring of the first generation, are so different as to have long been held to be of distinct species, and even of different classes; and it was not unnatural to hope that here somehow might be found an explanation of the occasional origin of a new species; but it was soon discovered that in all these instances, as Owen has observed, "the cycle of changes was ultimately closed," and that none of the intermediate or alternating forms of which it was composed broke away, as it were, into new species, by propagating individuals in their own likeness.

afterwards Admiral, Sir Alexander Cochrane, sagaciously perceived that the real penchant of the boy was for the sea, and accordingly entered his name on the books of various ships, the object being to give him a few years' standing in the service, which would prove an advantage to him should he ultimately adopt the sailor's profession. This was in pur suance of a common practice of the day. Many other even less commendable practices were common then; and Lord

• The Autobiography of a Seaman. Ry TuоMAS, Tenth Earl of DUNDONALD, Admiral of the Red, Rear Admiral of the Fleet, etc. Vol. I. London: Richard Bentley. 1800.