ns through changed environment, because of the
relief thus given the otherwise overcrowded ark, were now foremost in
denouncing such an extension of the doctrine of transmutation as Lamarck
proposed.

And, for that matter, the leaders of the scientific world were equally
antagonistic to the Lamarckian hypothesis. Cuvier in particular, once
the pupil of Lamarck, but now his colleague, and in authority more than
his peer, stood out against the transmutation doctrine with all his
force. He argued for the absolute fixity of species, bringing to bear
the resources of a mind which, as a mere repository of facts, perhaps
never was excelled. As a final and tangible proof of his position,
he brought forward the bodies of ibises that had been embalmed by the
ancient Egyptians, and showed by comparison that these do not differ in
the slightest particular from the ibises that visit the Nile to-day.

Cuvier's reasoning has such great historical interest--being the
argument of the greatest opponent of evolution of that day--that we
quote it at some length.

"The following objections," he says, "have already been started against
my conclusions. Why may not the presently existing races of mammiferous
land quadrupeds be mere modifications or varieties of those ancient
races which we now find in the fossil state, which modifications may
have been produced by change of climate and other local circumstances,
and since raised to the present excessive difference by the operations
of similar causes during a long period of ages?

"This objection may appear strong to those who believe in the indefinite
possibility of change of form in organized bodies, and think that,
during a succession of ages and by alterations of habitudes, all the
species may change into one another, or one of them give birth to all
the rest. Yet to these persons the following answer may be given from
their own system: If the species have changed by degrees, as they
assume, we ought to find traces of this gradual modification. Thus,
between the palaeotherium and the species of our own day, we should be
able to discover some intermediate forms; and yet no such discovery
has ever been made. Since the bowels of the earth have not preserved
monuments of this strange genealogy, we have no right to conclude that
the ancient and now extinct species were as permanent in their forms
and characters as those which exist at present; or, at least, that the
catastrophe which destroy