Vogt offers cogent reasons for the impossibility of this plan:-'From the Vertebrata to the Invertebrata,' says he, 'I can find no guide, nor have I any idea by what adaptation or intermixture intermediate forms can arise, which may lead from the Mollusca and Articulata to the Vertebrata. It is, moreover, well known that the lowest Vertebrate we are acquainted with, the Amphioxus Lanceolatus, is, as regards the development of all its organs, so far behind that of the higher Mollusca and Articulata, that the transition from one of these better-developed types into that of this Vertebrate would include a series of retrogressions from which, nevertheless, is said (by Darwin) to have issued the beginning of a structure capable of the highest development. In other words, I see here the Vertebrate type, with man as its highest development, commencing with an animal which, as regards the perfection of its organs, is excelled by most worms, and much more so by the Mollusca and Articulata, which, in some instances, attain the highest development of which the structural plan of the Articulata is capable. I should thus find myself face to face with an insoluble enigma, if I were not permitted to recur to the conclusion I have arrived at, namely, the assumption of an original difference in the primary germs from which the animal kingdom has been developed' (460).

This reasoning is both intelligible and convincing; but if it drives the learned Professor to 'assume' that there were various primary germs, from which the various divisions of the animal kingdom must have sprung, it amounts to the supposition of an original plan, and to the acknowledg ment that there existed primary germs differently constituted for different objects, to say nothing of the origin of these germs, of which this system gives no account. Professor Vogt thus escapes indeed from the enormous absurdity of retrogressive formations, adopted by Darwin and Lyell,-an absurdity which supposes that certain animals have gone backwards through old forms in order to start better in a new; but he does not escape from the necessity of acknowledging a design of Creation, by the plan which he proposes.

It is, however, curious to hear the Professor energetically protest against the one primordial germ. 'Not only,' says he,' do organisms that stand in an intermediate position between animals and plants consist of different kinds of cells; not only are those cells developed in a different mode, so that we are able to distinguish different species of these organisms; but also those egg-cells from which the more compound organisms are developed, show, from the beginning, a fundamental difference, both of form and subsequent development. The attempt, therefore, to reduce the whole organic world to one fundamental form, so to speak-one primordial cell, from which all organisms have been developed in different directions, is as futile as the assumption of those Naturalists who consider that the whole organic creation has been developed from an elementary plastic matter-the so-called primordial slime' (445).

From whence then came the varied germs of Professor Vogt's theory? From the soil! This we are told distinctly; but we are not told how the soil produced them.

'If it be difficult to conceive how the great diversity of organic types could have been developed from a common soil it can, on the other hand,

not be denied that an intrinsic difference in the constitution of this soil may have given rise to the diversity of the types springing from it' (446). Thus, then, after all we come back to the old thing, to the Mother Earth of Lucretius, and of the first speculators in the mystery of Creation, when science had no existence, and when the imagination undertook to settle that which experiment, analysis, and induction can alone establish.

THE LEPORIDES.

SOME time ago there was a good deal of talk about the Leporides, or crosses between hares and rabbits, that were alleged to be raised in considerable quantities by an enterprising Frenchman. Dr Pigeaux, writing

in the Bulletin de la Société Imperiale Zoologique d'Acclimation, observes, To sum up, therefore, we would affirm that Leporides exist, undoubtedly, under both forms, with predominance of the hare or the rabbit; but as a Species, or even as a Variety, we cannot admit them, since, like all other crosses, they have only an accidental productiveness.' He adds that their flesh has neither the whiteness of the rabbit nor the flavour of the hare.From the Intellectual Observer, August, 1867.

APPENDIX B.

Unfor

WHILST these sheets are going through the press another writer of the Transmutation School has published his opinions, in a book of which the title is The Geographical Distribution of Mammals, by Andrew Murray.' This work, excepting the theoretical part, is a valuable contribution to Natural History, and is illustrated throughout by useful maps to show the habitat of the animals properly belonging to the author's plan. tunately, however, the author has not confined himself to facts, but following the fashion of the day has propounded a Theory of the Origin of Species, which has its peculiarities, and accords with that of Mr Darwin only in the principle of excluding creation,-in the mode of exclusion these learned gentlemen do not agree.

'In some respects,' says the author, 'I have come nearer to Mr Darwin's views, but in others I still differ from him. It is not, however, by way of opposition that I offer my views; mine are rather of the nature of a sequel to his, or an attempt to work out the truth by the light of his previous labours.' He informs us that 'species are not modelled or produced by independent creation, but that under the operation of a general law the germs of organisms produce new forms different from themselves, when particular circumstances call the law into action.'

He inclines to 'the involution Theory of Bonnet and Priestly, that all the germs of future plants, organical bodies of all kinds, and the reproducible parts of them, are really contained in the first germ. This appears to me to furnish a satisfactory explanation of the homologies in structure, and the relationships between species, which are everywhere apparent through the organized world.'

This system of Bonnet, long ago exploded on the continent, and thoroughly decrié by the French physiologists, among whom it first made its appearance, is by them called the system of 'emboitement,' from the resemblance it offers of a series of boxes enclosing one another. For as all species have sprung from germs, there must have been germs within germs for future transformatious to an unlimited extent; and for aught we know to the contrary, as we spring from germs contained within apes, there may be germs within us for the development of other animals, as soon as our present 'inertia' shall change to a more active state. In this way the monkey himself sprung from some antecedent germ in some other animal, the horse from the gerin within an ass or a quagga, and so of all the equine germs.

'If in the concurrence of particular circumstances a law comes into action effecting an alteration in the germ which is about to be developed, it follows that in those points where the law has not affected the germ, it should have the same form as the parent; and on those points where it has affected the germ, it must produce the alteration, not by a creation of new parts, but by an alteration of those already existing' (5).

After stating that he does not dispute Mr Darwin's existence of the struggle of life, and that that influence cleared away the weakly and left the strongly endowed,' Mr Murray adds, I have not succeeded in bringing my mind to accept the possibility of a new species being eliminated (sic) out of any amount of gradual variation, hybridization, or struggle for life, taken either singly or in continuation.'

Mr Murray informs us that in the development of a germ into a new form, if fins were wanted where legs were before, they obtained not by the creation of a new organ, but by alteration of the parts of the leg, hence the existence of homologies between them.'

If fins were wanted! thus then it would appear that some terrestrial animal had within itself the germ of a future fish, that in process of time the germ awoke, and recognized its wants, and that to gratify its wishes, the leg which it had inherited from its parent' by the operation of a general law,' turned into a fin by the process of 'alteration,' other parts we presume turning into a tail, gills, &c.

Here, of course, Mr Murray agrees with Mr Darwin that the animal changed, but neither of these profound expositors of Nature's secrets give us any information as to the condition of the animal whilst the change was going on. Half a fin and half a leg would not suit either land or water; it would only verify the old saying, 'neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring.'

If we inquire of the first movement of the enclosed germ, and how it comes at last, after ages of contented quiescence, to show an inclination to change or if we ask how in this system the stability of Nature is not continually in a state of jeopardy, we have this answer: 'I imagine that the law which secures the stability of species is INERTIA—so long as they are not meddled with they stand still; but subject them to change, whether it comes to them, or they go to it-give them an impulse of any kind, and variation commences. Some receive the impulse more easily than others. What may be felt by one may not be felt by another. Constitutions differ (!), hence the greater range of some species than others; but wherever the change makes itself felt, there I apprehend modification commences.'

The result of this exposition then amounts to this, that animals have no disposition to change, and that if they are let alone they remain as they were. The germ within keeps quiet till it is put into circumstances to desire a change. The proposition that if the germ is subjected to change variation will commence,' would scarcely be contested, as little as that 'when change makes itself felt modification will commence.' These profound remarks will pass undisputed, but the difficulty is in subjecting the germ to change, and in making the change felt. If things change, they do change; no doubt of that, but the effecting the mutation is the thing to

be proved. If the sky were to fall we should catch larks. These IFS are the cloud-pillars of many a beautiful fabric of the imagination, but when the rays of truth penetrate them they melt away into aëry dreams.

It is a singular part of this Theory that changes take place not in individuals only, but in masses of organized beings, many thousands of the same species changing at the same time. 'One essential element in my Theory is that the change is effected through the medium of not single individuals, but of a multitude of individuals; a whole nation of the same species' (8).

As, then, we are informed that 'man cannot be regarded as more widely separated from the apes than the different families of them from each other' (73), which amounts to this, that man is a species of the ape genus, and as no species is created, we must understand that the germ of the human species began to break through its inertia which it had maintained within the ape for ages, and to make a stir for a new form-the human. This stir was not in a solitary individual, not in Sir C. Lyell's one superior ape, but in a whole nation of apes at once, and thus some thousands of men and women were contemporaneously 'developed' out of some thousands of male and female apes.

Mr Murray is careful to inform us that 'the process of change is obri ously gradual and imperceptible, and extends over a greater space of time than we have had the opportunity of observing' (8), and of this there can be no doubt.

How far this prudent remark is in keeping with the following statement the reader must judge:

'The adaptation of species to the conditions in which they are to pass their lives, as of tree kangaroos to a life in trees, is a phenomenon which does not come within the scope of this inquiry. I offer no opinion here upon the subject. Only of one thing I may say I feel as sure as I can be of anything which I do not know, and that is, that it is not by the process supposed by Mr Darwin, namely, by Nature trying an infinity of experiments, and rejecting them till she hit upon the right one. Nature never makes chips. When the occasion for a tree kangaroo arose we may be sure that the tree kangaroo appeared perfect at the first attempt. There was no failure of myriads of kangaroos in other directions created or developed but to die, until by chance one in this direction appeared. This I feel, but I cannot prove it. It is only my feeling, and therefore of no use to any one but myself' (13).

Mr Murray must excuse us. This 'feeling' is of very great use to us all, it is the feeling of common sense breaking down the barriers of dogmatism and paradox; it is the force of that great gift bestowed on us all, plain reason, vindicating its liberty and casting off the trammels of magisterial hypothesis; and forcing a man to acknowledge, that which it is most difficult to disbelieve even for a short time, that a superior power created animals perfect at once, for the part that was chalked out for them in the domain of creation.

Mr Murray wishes to be in the mode, and to build up an atheistic system, but common sense breaks out in this passage, and sweeps away