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Explanations: a sequel to Vestiges of the natural history of creation / By the author of that work.

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
MDCCCXLV
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Explanations: a sequel to Vestiges of the natural history of creation / By the author of that work. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    59/222 (page 47)
    —but does he know the signs by which such a transition could be detected? I am aware of none. He says the new species are sharply de- fined—that is, strongly distinct ; and so they may be, without any prejudice to the transmutation theory—as far, at least, as I understand it. And here he remarks that there are the same diffi- culties in the way of this theory, “ both in the grouping of each separate system, and in the passage from one system to another; and that is true, whatever part of the ascending geological series we choose to take between the lowest formations and the highest.” As he does not state the nature of the difficulties, I cannot under- take to say what argument or what reconstruc- tion of my system may be necessary to meet to express my surprise at finding Dr. Whewell participating in the mere ignorance of the first two of the above-mentioned journals. In the preface to a volume which he has recently published, under the title of Indications of the Creator, he meets my arguments with a crude and incorrect view of the fossil history, commencing with this sentence—“ Vertebrate animals do exist in the Silurian rocks, from which the asserted law [that of development] excludes them.” The existence of a non-pisciferous formation had been unknown to him. Many of the objections made to the development theory, in obscurer quarters, rest on errors of a similar kind.