stocks, the doctrine of the origin of species is obviously not necessarily
concerned. The transmutation hypothesis, for example, is perfectly
consistent either with the conception of a special creation of the
primitive germ, or with the supposition of its having arisen, as a
modification of inorganic matter, by natural causes.

The doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to the
supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cosmogony; but
it is curious to observe that, as the doctrine is at present maintained by
men of science, it is as hopelessly inconsistent with the Hebrew view as
any other hypothesis.

If there be any result which has come more clearly out of geological
investigation than another, it is, that the vast series of extinct animals
and plants is not divisible, as it was once supposed to be, into distinct
groups, separated by sharply-marked boundaries. There are no great gulfs
between epochs and formations--no successive periods marked by the
appearance of plants, of water animals, and of land animals, _en
masse_. Every year adds to the list of links between what the older
geologists supposed to be widely separated epochs: witness the crags
linking the drift with older tertiaries; the Maestricht beds linking the
tertiaries with the chalk; the St. Cassian beds exhibiting an abundant
fauna of mixed mesozoic and palaeozoic types, in rocks of an epoch once
supposed to be eminently poor in life; witness, lastly, the incessant
disputes as to whether a given stratum shall be reckoned devonian or
carboniferous, silurian or devonian, cambrian or silurian.

This truth is further illustrated in a most interesting manner by the
impartial and highly competent testimony of M. Pictet, from whose
calculations of what percentage of the genera of animals, existing in any