st disbelieve in separate acts
of creation, twenty-seven have written on special branches of natural
history or geology.)

In 1853 a celebrated geologist, Count Keyserling ("Bulletin de la Soc.
Geolog.", 2nd Ser., tom. x, page 357), suggested that as new diseases,
supposed to have been caused by some miasma have arisen and spread over
the world, so at certain periods the germs of existing species may have
been chemically affected by circumambient molecules of a particular
nature, and thus have given rise to new forms.

In this same year, 1853, Dr. Schaaffhausen published an excellent
pamphlet ("Verhand. des Naturhist. Vereins der Preuss. Rheinlands",
etc.), in which he maintains the development of organic forms on the
earth. He infers that many species have kept true for long periods,
whereas a few have become modified. The distinction of species he
explains by the destruction of intermediate graduated forms. "Thus
living plants and animals are not separated from the extinct by new
creations, but are to be regarded as their descendants through continued
reproduction."

A well-known French botanist, M. Lecoq, writes in 1854 ("Etudes sur
Geograph." Bot. tom. i, page 250), "On voit que nos recherches sur la
fixite ou la variation de l'espece, nous conduisent directement aux
idees emises par deux hommes justement celebres, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
et Goethe." Some other passages scattered through M. Lecoq's large
work make it a little doubtful how far he extends his views on the
modification of species.

The "Philosophy of Creation" has been treated in a masterly manner by
the Rev. Baden Powell, in his "Essays on the Unity of Worlds", 1855.
Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which he shows that the
introduction of new species is "a regular, not a casual phenomenon," or,
as Sir John Herschel expresses it, "a natural in contradistinction to a
miraculous process."

The third volume of the "Journal of the Linnean Society" contains
papers, read July 1, 1858, by Mr. Wallace and myself, in which, as
stated in the introductory remarks to this volume, the theory of
Natural Selection is promulgated by Mr. Wallace with admirable force and
clearness.

Von Baer, toward whom all zoologists feel so profound a respect,
expressed about the year 1859 (see Prof. Rudolph Wagner,
"Zoologisch-Anthropologische Untersuchungen", 1861, s. 51) his
conviction, chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution,
that forms no