a further step in the same direction, while he protests that
"analogy may be a deceitful guide," yet he follows its inexorable
leading to the inference that "probably all the organic beings which
have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial
form, into which life was first breathed."[a]

In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a little
way; in the last, the wedge is driven home.

We have already (in the preceding number) sketched some of the reasons
suggestive of such a theory of derivation of species,--reasons which
give it plausibility, and even no small probability, as applied to our
actual world and to changes occurring since the latest tertiary period.
We are well pleased at this moment to find that the conclusions we were
arriving at in this respect are sustained by the very high authority and
impartial judgment of Pictet, the Swiss palaeontologist. In his review
of Darwin's book,[b]--much the fairest and most admirable opposing one
that has yet appeared,--he freely accepts that _ensemble_ of natural
operations which Darwin impersonates under the now familiar name of
Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout the first
chapters seems "_a la fois prudent et fort_" and is disposed to accept
the whole argument in its foundations, that is, so far as it relates
to what is now going on, or has taken place in the present geological
period,--which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to the
borders of the tertiary.[c] Pictet accordingly admits that the theory
will very well account for the origination by divergence of nearly
related species, whether within the present period or in remoter
geological times: a very natural view for him to take; since he
appears to have reached and published, several years ago, the pregnant
conclusion, that there most probably was some material connection
between the closely related species of two successive faunas, and that
the numerous close species, whose limits are so difficult to determine,
were not all created distinct and independent. But while accepting, or
ready to accept, the basis of Darwin's theory, and all its legitimate
direct inferences, he rejects the ultimate conclusions, brings some
weighty arguments to bear against them, and is evidently convinced that
he can draw a clear line between the sound inferences, which he favors,
and the unsound or unwarranted theoretical deductions, which he rejects.
We ho