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ZOOLOGICAL AND

LECT. II. respectively adapted to certain conditions of existence, such as climate, temperature, mutual relations, and no doubt other circumstances of favourable influence which men have not yet discovered, or which never may be discovered in the present state. These conditions cannot be transferred to other situations. The habitation proper to one description of vegetable or animal families would be intolerable, and speedily fatal, to others. Where the extreme of incongruity does not exist, there are causes of unsuitableness, minor but slowly and surely effective. when, as in many parts of the two hemispheres, and on the contrary sides of the equator, there is apparently a similarity of climate; we find not an identity, but only an analogy, of animal and vegetable species.

Even

It is confessedly difficult to fix with absolute precision the lines of demarcation for these independent domains of living organized nature. The general fact is established beyond the reach of doubt; but naturalists are waiting for a more complete acquaintance with the plants and animals of every part of the globe, before they deem the natural divisions finally determined. According to the degree of knowledge already attained, the following may be accepted as an approximation. A distinguished christian physiologist and philosopher, Dr. Prichard, was the first to bring forwards correct views upon this interesting subject; and he proposes seven

BOTANICAL DISTRICTS.

Mr. LECT. II.

regions for the distribution of animals.* Swainson pleads for five, but upon a ground of analogy which he has assumed without proof, and which is contrary to impregnable truth.† Others make eleven. With regard to the vegetable kingdom, some eminent naturalists have given their opinion in favour of ten for the old continents, and six for America: § but the great philosophical botanists of Geneva, Messieurs de Candolle, father and son, "than whom," says Professor Hitchcock, "no better judges can be named, reckon the number of distinct botanical provinces at twenty-seven. This estimate was the result of an examination of seventy or eighty thousand species."|| Mr. Henslow, the Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, a man to whom Geology, as well as the professional science which he adorns, is under great obligations, remarks that "We do not as yet possess any very accurate information respecting the number and exact extent of the well-defined botanical regions into which the surface of the

* Researches into the Physical History of Mankind; vol. I. pp.68 third ed.

—97;

† On the Geography and Classification of Animals; pp. 14—18. Prof. Hitchcock, in the American Biblical Repository, vol. XI. p. 17; 1838.

§ Von Schouw's Fundam. Princip. of a Universal Geography of the Veget. Kingd. German Transl. from the Danish, by the author, with an Atlas; Berlin, 1824.

|| Amer. Bibl. Repos. as above. Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. III. p. 7.

LECT. II. earth may be mapped out :"* but he proposes forty-five as an approximating estimate.

Separate creations.

Hence it follows that there must have been separate original creations, perhaps at different and respectively distant epochs. Man, whom the Creator formed to "have dominion over the works of his hands," to a wide extent of the inferior natures, was brought into being in ONE pair; from which all the varieties of our kind have descended. They are only varieties, effected by circumstances, and not species, which would imply separate primary ancestors. This position, unhappily rejected by some persons, is not only a fact which lies at the foundation of revealed religion, but it is confirmed by an accumulation of proof from anatomical structure, from history, from the theory of language, and from the philosophy of intellectual and moral qualities. For this assertion, I may appeal to the authority of the veteran Blumenbach, who occupies a station among the highest, in the Comparative Anatomy of the different races of men; and to both the authority and the luminous arguments of Dr. Prichard, in the work before referred to.

Man and a small number of animals peculiarly serviceable to man, are endowed with a capacity of adaptation to all the differences of climate and other circumstances, not indeed unlimited,

Descriptive and Physiological Botany; p. 305.

† Born in 1752, and appointed Professor of Medicine in the University of Göttingen in 1778.

THE HUMAN SPECIES.

75

This LECT. II.

but extending through a wide range. capacity requires, for its complete developement, a gradual proceeding in subjection to the agents of change; for which the life of no individual is sufficiently long, nor even the duration of several generations. The process must be carried on through many steps of descent; and, in its course, considerable alterations of structure are slowly produced.

preceding

appear con

trary to the

Scriptures.

LECTURE III.

ROMANS XI. 36. Of HIM, and through HIM, and to HIм, are all things to whom be glory for ever.

LECT III. SOME of the most important positions affirmed Some of the in the preceding lecture could not fail to be doctrines perceived by my attentive hearers, to be at variance with certain sentiments or interpretations, which are extensively received under the supposition of their being declared, or at least implied, in the Holy Scriptures. It is now my duty to state, in particular detail, what those sentiments and opinions are; and in what manner they stand in contradiction to the facts in the natural history of the earth, to which we have adverted.

But they are not really so.

My auditors will do me the favour to observe, that I speak of opinions and interpretations; the sentiments which men have taken up, and promulgated as the declarations of the Bible. We have not yet arrived at the part of these lectures in which we shall have to examine whether those interpretations are the genuine sense of the divine oracles. It would not be proper to anticipate that inquiry: yet I cannot but be

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