Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism Part 18

I-3. "Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens; quae formae secundum generationis inditas leges, produxere plures, at sibi semper similes."--Linn. Phil. Bot., 99, 157.

I-4. Aga.s.siz, "Essay on Cla.s.sification; Contributions to Natural History,"

p. 132, et seq.

I-5. As to this, Darwin remarks that he can only hope to see the law hereafter proved true (p. 449); and p. 338: "Aga.s.siz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the same cla.s.ses; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. I must follow Pictet and Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is very far from proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at least in regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each other within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Aga.s.siz accords well with the theory of natural selection."

I-6. Op. cit., p. 131.--One or two Bridgewater Treatises, and most modern works upon natural theology, should have rendered the evidences of thought in inorganic Nature not "unexpected."

I-7. Volume xvii. (2), 1854, p. 13.

I-8. We suspect that this is not an ultimate fact, but a natural consequence of inheritance--the inheritance of disease or of tendency to disease, which close interbreeding perpetuates and acc.u.mulates, but wide breeding may neutralize or eliminate.

I-9. The rules and processes of breeders of animals, and their results, are so familiar that they need not be particularized. Less is popularly known about the production of vegetable races. We refer our readers back to this Journal, vol. xxvii., pp. 440--442 (May, 1859), for an abstract of the papers of M. Vilmorin upon this subject.

I-10. Quadrupeds of America," vol. ii., p. 239.

I-11. "Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv., p. 178.

I-12. Owen adds a third, viz., vegetative repet.i.tion; but this, in the vegetable kingdom, is simply unity of type.

I-13. "Contributions to Natural History of America," vol. i., pp. 127--131.

I-14. Op. cit., p. 130.

II-1. To parry an adversary's thrust at a vulnerable part, or to show that it need not be fatal, is an incomplete defense. If the discussion had gone on, it might, perhaps, have been made to appear that the Darwinian hypothesis, so far from involving the idea of necessity (except in the sense that everything is of necessity), was based upon the opposite idea, that of contingency.

III-1. Vide "Proceedings of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science," 1859, and London Athenoeum, pa.s.sim. It appears to be conceded that these "celts" or stone knives are artificial productions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhinoceros, etc.

III-2. See "Correspondence of M. Nickles," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for March, 1860.

III-3. See Morlot, "Some General Views on Archaeology," in American Journal of Science and Arts, for January, 186o, translated from "Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise," 1859.

III-4. Page 484, English edition. In the new American edition (vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432) the princ.i.p.al a.n.a.logies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended: "But this inference is chiefly grounded on a.n.a.logy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great cla.s.s, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of h.o.m.ology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent."

III-5. In Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, March, 1860.

III-6. This we learn from his very interesting article, "De la Question de l'Homme Fossile," in the same (March) number of the Biblioteque Universelle. (See, also, the same author's "Note sur la Periode Quaternaire ou Diluvienne, consideree dans ses Rapports avec l'Epoque Actuelle," in the number for August, 1860, of the same periodical.)

III-7. In Comptes Rendus, Academie des Sciences, February 2, 1857.

III-8. Whatever it may be, it is not "the h.o.m.oeopathic form of the trans.m.u.tative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be (p. 252, American reprint), so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p.

259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous principle, of an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the supposed trans.m.u.tation is per saltus. "h.o.m.oeopathic doses of trans.m.u.tation," indeed! Well, if we really must swallow trans.m.u.tation in some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild h.o.m.oeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the Edinburgh general pract.i.tioner appears to be compounding.

III-9. Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and Christian Examiner, for May, p. 457.

III-10. Page 188, English edition.

III-11. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 147--149.

III-12. In "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol.

i., p.128, 129.

III-13. Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," vol. 1, p. 130; and American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-14. North American Review for April 1860, p. 506.

III-15. Vide motto from Butler, prefixed to the second edition of Darwin's work.

III-16. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 504.

III-17. North American Review, loc. cit., p. 487, et pa.s.sim.

III-18. In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

III-19. Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for May last.

III-20. Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on "Acclimatization," etc.

III-21. American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146.

IV-1. A name which, at the close of his article, De Candolle proposes for the study of the succession of organized beings, to comprehend, therefore, palaeontology and all included under what is called geographical botany and zoology--the whole forming a science parallel to geology--the latter devoted to the history of unorganized bodies, the former, to that of organized beings, as respects origin, distribution, and succession. We are not satisfied with the word, notwithstanding the precedent of palaeontology; since ontology, the Science of being, has an established meaning as referring to mental existence--i.e., is a synonym for a department of metaphysics.

IV-2. Natural History Review, January, 1862

IV-3. What the Rev. Princ.i.p.al Tulloch remarks in respect to the philosophy of miracles has a pertinent application here. We quote at second hand:

"The stoutest advocates of interference can mean nothing more than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of Nature that a new issue arises on given circ.u.mstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human definition; the answer to which does not and cannot affect the divine meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this Higher Will is every.

where reason and wisdom, it seems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by interference or violation."

IV-4. Particularly citing Flourens: "La ressemblance n'est qu'une condition secondaire; la condition essentielle est la descendance: ce n'est pas la ressemblance, c'est la succession des individus, qui fait l'espece."

V-1. The phrase "Atlantic United States" is here used throughout in contradistinction to Pacific United States: to the former of course belong, botanically and geographically, the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries up to the eastern border of the great woodless plains, which const.i.tute an intermediate region.

V-2. The tabulated list referred to was printed as an appendix to the official edition of this discourse, but is here omitted.

V-3. American Journal of Science, 1867, p. 402; "Proceedings of American Academy," vol. viii., p. 244.

V-4. "Memoirs of American Academy," vol. vi., pp. 377--458 (1859)

V-5. Die vegetation der erde nach ihrer kilmatischen Anordnung," 1871.

V-6. Reference should also be made to the extensive researches of Newberry upon the tertiary and cretaceous floras of the Western United States. See especially Prof. Newberry's paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History, vol. vii., No. 4, describing fossil plants of Vancouver's Island, etc.; his "Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North America," etc., in "Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History," vol. ix., April, 1868; "Report on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 1859--1860," published in 1869; and an interesting article ent.i.tled "The Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage," published in The American Naturalist, January, 1871.

The only doc.u.ment I was able to consult was Lesquereux's "Report on the Fossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872.

V-7. There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argument that it should not pa.s.s unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantic United States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to j.a.pan. Prof. Newberry identified it several years ago in a collection, obtained by Dr. Hayden, of miocene fossil plants of Dakota Territory, which is far beyond its present habitat. He moreover regards it as probably identical with a fossil specimen "described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filicites Hebridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull."