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Asin, as well as of Atlantic North America, but all wanting in California; one Juglans like the walnut of the Old World, and another like our black walnut ; two or three grapevines, ono near our Southern fox grape or muscadine, another near our Northern frostgrapo; a Tilia, very like our basswood of the Atlan tic States only; a Liquidambar; a magnolia, which recalls our M. grandiflora; a Liriodendron, sole representative of our tulip-tree; and a sassafras, very like the living tree.

Most of these, it will be noticed, have their nearest or their only living representatives in the Atlantic States, and when elsewhere, mainly in Eastern Asin. Several of them, or of species like them, have been detected in our tertiary deposits, west of the Missis sippi, by Newberry and Lesquereux. Herbaceous plants, as it happens, are rarely preserved in a fossil state, else they would probably supply additional tes timony to the antiquity of our existing vegetation, its wide diffusion over the northern and now frigid zone, and its enforced migration under changes of climato.'

Concluding, then, as we must, that our existing vegetation is a continuation of that of the tertiary

There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argu. ment that it should not pass unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantio United States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to Japan, 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 it present habitat. Ho moreover regards it as probably Identical with a fossil specimen “described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filiciten Hibridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull,"

period, may we suppose that it absolutely originated then Evidently not. The preceding Cretaceous pe riod has furnished to Carruthers in Europe a fossil fruit like that of the Sequoia gigantea of the famous groves, associated with pines of the same character as those that accompany the present tree; has furnished to Heer, from Greenland, two more Sequoias, one of them identical with a tertiary species, and one nearly allied to Sequoia Langsdorfii, which in turn is a probable ancestor of the common Californian redwood; has furnished to Newberry and Lesquereux in North America the remains of another ancient Sequoia, a Glyptostrobus, a Liquidambar which well represents our sweet-gum-tree, oaks analogous to living ones, leaves of a plane-tree, which are also in the Tertiary, and are scarcely distinguishable from our own Platanus occidentalis, of a magnolia and a tulip-tree, and "of a sassafras undistinguishable from our living species." I need not continue the enumeration. Suffice it to say that the facts justifiy the conclusion which Lesquereux -a scrupulous investigator-has already announced: that "the essential types of our actual flora are marked in the Cretaceous period, and have come to us after passing, without notable changes, through the Tertiary

formations of our continent."

According to these views, as regards plants at least, the adaptation to successivo times and changed conditions has been maintained, not by absolute renewals, but by gradual modifications. I, for one, cannot doubt that the present existing species are the lineal successors of those that garnished the earth in the old timo before them, and that they wero as well adapted to

their surroundings then, as those which flourish and bloom around us are to their conditions now. Ordor and exquisite adaptation did not wait for man's coming, nor were they ever stereotyped. Organic Nature-by which I mean the system and totality of living things, and their adaptation to each other and to the worldwith all its apparent and indeed real stability, should be likened, not to the ocean, which varies only by tidal oscillations from a fixed level to which it is always returning, but rather to a river, so vast that wo can neither discern its shores nor reach its sources, whose onward flow is not less actual beenuso too slow to bo observed by the ephemere which hover over its surface, or are borne upon its bosom.

Such ideas as these, though still repugnant to some, and not long since to many, havo so possessed the minds of the naturalists of the present day that hardly a discourse can be pronounced or an investigation pros ecuted without reference to them. I suppose that tho views here taken are little, if at all, in advance of tho average scientific mind of the day. I cannot regard them as less noble than thoso which they are succeeding. An ablo philosophical writer, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, has recently and truthfully said: '

"It is a singular fact that, when wo can find out how any thing is done, our first conclusion seems to be that God did not do it. No matter how wonderful, how beautiful, how intimatoly complex and deliento has been tho machinery which has worked, perhaps for centuries, perhaps for millions of ages, to bring about some benefleent result, if we can but catch a glimpso of the wheels its divine character disappears."

"Darwinism in Morals," in Theological Review, April, 1871.

I agree with the writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy-I will add, deplorable. Through what faults or infirmities of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to bo so thought, wo need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixity of the earth itself may equally outlast the notion of the fixity of the species which inhabit it; that, in the future even more than in the past, faith in an order, which is the basis of science, will not as it cannot reasonably-be dissevered from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.

VI.

THE ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATUralists TOWARD DAR

WINISM.'

(THE NATION, October 10, 1873.)

THAT homely adage, "What is ono man's meat is another man's poison," comes to mind when we consider with what different eyes different naturalists look upon the hypothesis of the derivativo origin of actual specific forms, sinco Mr. Darwin gavo it voguo and

1" Histoire des Helences et des Hovants depuis deux Midcles, sulvia d'autres études sur des sujets welentifiques, en particulier sur la Hóleo. tion dans l'Espèce Humaine, par Alphonse Do Candolle," Genòve; II, Georg. 1873.

"Addresses of George Bentham, President, read at the anniversary meetings of the Linnean Society, 1862-1873."

"Notes on the Classification, History, and Geographical Distribution of Composite. By George Bentham." Separate issue from the Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. XIII. London. 1873.

"On Paleontological Evidence of Gradual Modification of Animal Forms, read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 25, 1873. by Prof. W. H. Flower," (Journal of the Royal Institution, pp. 11.) "The Distribution and Migration of Birds. Memoir presented to the National Academy of Sciences, January, 1865, abstracted in the American Journal of Science and the Arts, 1866, etc. - By Spencer F. Baird."

"The Story of the Earth and Man. By J. W. Dawson, L.L. D., F. R. S., F. G. S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal. London: Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Harper & Brothers. 1973. Pp. 403, 12mo.

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