sent day, with perfect specimens
for examination, two forms can seldom be connected by intermediate
varieties and thus proved to be the same species, until many specimens have
been collected from many places; and in the case of fossil species this
could rarely be effected by palaeontologists. We shall, perhaps, best
perceive the improbability of our being enabled to connect species by
numerous, fine, intermediate, fossil links, by asking ourselves whether,
for instance, geologists at some future period will be able to prove, that
our different breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, and dogs have descended from
a single stock or from several aboriginal stocks; or, again, whether
certain sea-shells inhabiting the shores of North America, which are ranked
by some conchologists as distinct species from their European
representatives, and by other conchologists as only varieties, are really
varieties or are, as it is called, specifically distinct. This could be
effected only by the future geologist discovering in a fossil state
numerous intermediate gradations; and such success seems to me improbable
in the highest degree.

Geological research, though it has added numerous species to existing and
extinct genera, and has made the {300} intervals between some few groups
less wide than they otherwise would have been, yet has done scarcely
anything in breaking down the distinction between species, by connecting
them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not
having been effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the
many objections which may be urged against my views. Hence it will be worth
while to sum up the foregoing remarks, under an imaginary illustration. The
Malay Archipelago is of about the size of Europe from the North Cape to the
Mediterranean, and from Britain to Russia; and therefore equals all the
geological formations which have been examined with any accuracy, excepting
those of the United States of America. I fully agree with Mr.
Godwin-Austen, that the present condition of the Malay Archipelago, with
its numerous large islands separated by wide and shallow seas, probably
represents the former state of Europe, whilst most of our formations were
accumulating. The Malay Archipelago is one of the richest regions of the
whole world in organic beings; yet if all the species were to be collected
which have ever lived there, how imperfectly would they represent the
natural history of the wo