om some primal, less
specialized, edificial category. What better evidence for such
hypothesis could we have than the variations and grades which connect
one of these species with another? We might extend the parallel, and
get some good illustrations of natural selection from the history of
architecture, the probable origin of the different styles, and their
adaptation to different climates and conditions. Two qualifying
considerations are noticeable. One, that houses do not propagate, so
as to produce continuing lines of each sort and variety; but this is
of small moment on Agassiz's view, he holding that genealogical
connection is not of the essence of species at all. The other, that
the formation and development of the ideas upon which human works
proceed is gradual; or, as the same great naturalist well states it,
"while human thought is consecutive, Divine thought is simultaneous."
But we have no right to affirm this of Divine action.

We must close here. We meant to review some of the more general
scientific objections which we thought not altogether tenable. But,
after all, we are not so anxious just now to know whether the new
theory is well founded on facts as whether it would be harmless, if it
were. Besides, we feel quite unable to answer some of these
objections, and it is pleasanter to take up those which one thinks he
can.

Among the unanswerable, perhaps the weightiest of the objections, is
that of the absence, in geological deposits, of vestiges of the
intermediate forms which the theory requires to have existed. Here all
that Mr. Darwin can do is to insist upon the extreme imperfection of
the geological record and the uncertainty of negative evidence. But,
withal, he allows the force of the objection almost as much as his
opponents urge it,--so much so, indeed, that two of his English
critics turn the concession unfairly upon him, and charge him with
actually basing his hypothesis upon these and similar
difficulties,--as if he held it because of the difficulties, and not
in spite of them;--a handsome return for his candor!

As to this imperfection of the geological record, perhaps we should
get a fair and intelligible illustration of it by imagining the
existing animals and plants of New England, with all their remains and
products since the arrival of the Mayflower, to be annihilated; and
that, in the coming time, the geologists of a new colony, dropped by
the New Zealand fleet on its way to explor