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Show 246 JJAR WINIA}{A. more than less amenable to the criticisms we may be . disposed to make upon it. 2. That the author is thoroughly convinced that no species or form deserving the name was ever derived from another, or originated from natural causes; and he maintains this doctrine with earnestness, much variety of argument and illustration, and no small ability; so that he may be taken as a representative of the view exactly opposed to that which is favored by those naturalists whose essays we have been considering-to whom, indeed, he stands in marked contrast in spirit and method, being greatly dispos~d to argue the question from the remote rather than the near end. 3. And fina1ly, he has a conviction that the evolutionary doctrines of the day are not only untrue, but thoroughly bad and irreligious. This belief, and t.he natural anxiety with which he contemplates their prevalence, may excuse a certain vehemence and looseness of statement which were better avoided, as where the geologists of the day are said to be "broken up into bands of specialists, little better than scientific banditti, liable to be beaten in detail, and prone to commit outrages on comm<;m-sense and good taste which bring their otherwise good cause into disrepute ; " and where he despairingly suggests that the prevalence of the doctrines he deprecates "seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization, and, but for the vigor which one sees everywhere, might be taken as an indi.cation that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility." This is droll reading~ when one considers that the " evolutionist" is the only sort of naturalist who has ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATURALISTS. 247 much occasion to employ his "capacity for generaliza-f IOn " upon "the accu~ulated facts" in their bearing upon the problem of the origin of species· since the " spem'a1 crea fwr.us"t, who maintains that ' they were sup~rnaturally originated just as they are, by the very terms of his doctrine places them out of the reach f . 'fi 0 smentl c .explanation: Again, when one reflects upon t~e new Impetus ;v hiCh the derivative hypothesis has given to systematic natural history, and reads the declaration of a master in this department (the President of the Linnean Society) that Mr. Darwin "has in this nineteenth century brought about as great a revolution in the philosophic study of organic Nature as that which was effected in the previous century by the immortal Swede," it sounds oddly to hear Jrom Dr . . Dawson that "it obliterates the fine perception of differences ~r?~ the mind. of the naturalist, . . . . destroys the poss1bihty of a philosophical classification reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a r~pid decay in syst.ematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England." So, also, "it removes from th~ study of Nature the ideas of final cause and purpose" -a sentence which reads curiously in the light of Darw~ n's. special investigations, such as tho·se upon the chmbmg of plants, the agency of insects in the fertilization of blossoms, and the· like, which have brought back teleology to natural science, wedded to morphology and already fruitful of discoveries. The difficulty with Dr. Dawson here is (and it need not be underrated) that apparently he cannot as yet believe an adaptation, act, or result, to be purposed the |