the evolution of form, so manifest in some departments of the animal kingdom, e. g., the spiral shells of the Mollusca, it is difficult to believe that there is not, in Nature, a deeper-seated and innate principle, to the operation of which natural selection is merely an adjunct.  The whole range of the Mammalia, fossil and recent, cannot furnish a species which has had a wider geographical distribution, and passed through a longer term of time, and through more extreme changes of climatal conditions, than the mammoth.  If species are so unstable, and so susceptible of mutation through such influences, why does that extinct form stand out so signally a monument of stability?  By his admirable researches and earnest writings, Darwin has, beyond all his contemporaries, given an impulse to the philosophical investigation of the most backward and obscure branch of the biological sciences of his day; he has laid the foundations of a great edifice; but he need not be surprised if, in the progress of erection, the superstructure is altered by his successors, like the Duomo of Milan from the Roman to a different style of architecture.”

Entertaining ourselves the opinion that something more than natural selection is requisite to account for the orderly production and succession of species, we offer two incidental remarks upon the above extract.

1.  We find in it—­in the phrase “natural selection, or a process of variation from external influences”—­an example of the very common confusion of two distinct things, viz., variation and natural selection.  The former has never yet been shown to have its cause in “external influences,” nor to occur at random.  As we have elsewhere insisted, if not inexplicable, it has never been explained; all we can yet say is, that plants and animals are prone to vary, and that some conditions favor variation.  Perhaps in this Dr. Falconer may yet find what he seeks:  for “it is difficult to believe that there is not in nature a deeper-seated and innate principle, to the operation of which natural selection is merely an adjunct.”  The latter, which is the ensemble of the external influences, including the competition of the individuals them selves, picks out certain variations as they arise, but in no proper sense can be said to originate them

2.  Although we are not quite sure how Dr Falconer in tends to apply the law of phyllotaxis to illustrate his idea, we fancy that a pertinent illustration may be drawn from it in this way.  There are two species of phyllotaxis, perfectly distinct, and we suppose, not mathematically reducible the one to the other, viz.:  (1.) That of alternate leaves, with its vane ties and (2.) That of verticillate leaves, of which opposite leaves present the simplest case That although generally constant a change from one variety of alternate phyllotaxis to an other should occur on the same axis, or on successive axes, is not surprising, the different sorts being terms of