In brief—­not to continue these abstracts and remarks, and without reference to Darwin’s particular theory (which De Candolle at the close very fairly considers)—­if existing species, or many of them, are as ancient as they are now generally thought to be, and were subject to the physical and geographical changes (among them the coming and the going of the glacial epoch) which this antiquity implies; if in former times they were as liable to variation as they now are; and if the individuals of the same species may claim a common local origin, then we cannot wonder that “the theory of a succession of forms by deviations of anterior forms” should be regarded as “the most natural hypothesis,” nor at the general advance made toward its acceptance.

The question being, not, how plants and animals originated, but, how came the existing animals and plants to be just where they are and what they are, it is plain that naturalists interested in such inquiries are mostly looking for the answer in one direction.  The general drift of opinion, or at least of expectation, is exemplified by this essay of De Candolle; and the set and force of the current are seen by noticing how it carries along naturalists of widely different views and prepossessions—­some faster and farther than others—­but all in one way.  The tendency is, we may say, to extend the law of continuity, or something analogous to it, from inorganic to organic Nature, and in the latter to connect the present with the past in some sort of material connection.  The generalization may indeed be expressed so as not to assert that the connection is genetic, as in Mr. Wallace’s formula:  “Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with preexisting closely-allied species.”  Edward Forbes, who may be called the originator of this whole line of inquiry, long ago expressed a similar view.  But the only material sequence we know, or can clearly conceive, in plants and animals, is that from parent to progeny; and, as De Candolle implies, the origin of species and that of races can hardly be much unlike, nor governed by other than the same laws, whatever these may be.

The progress of opinion upon this subject in one generation is not badly represented by that of De Candolle himself, who is by no means prone to adopt new views without much consideration.  In an elementary treatise published in the year 1835, he adopted and, if we rightly remember, vigorously maintained, Schouw’s idea of the double or multiple origin of species, at least of some species—­a view which has been carried out to its ultimate development only perhaps by Agassiz, in the denial of any necessary genetic connection among the individuals of the same species, or of any original localization more restricted than the area now occupied by the species.  But in i855, in his “Geographic Botanique,” the multiple hypothesis, although in principle not abandoned, loses its point, in view of the probable high antiquity