is the special fact with which, in the development controversy, the
author of the “Vestiges” connects the name of the Swedish naturalist!
All the fish of the Silurian System belonged to that true Placoid order
which Linnæus, impressed by its high standing, erected into an order,
not of worms, but of reptiles. He elevated A, the true Placoid, while he
degraded B, the glutinous hag. But it was necessary to the argument of
the author of the “Vestiges” that the earliest existing fish should be
represented as fish low in the scale; and so he has cited the name and
authority of Linnæus in its bearing against the glutinous hag B, as if
it had borne against the standing of the true Placoid A. The Patagonians
are the tallest and bulkiest men in the world, whereas their neighbors,
the Fuegians are a slim and diminutive race. And if, in some controversy
raised regarding the real size of the more gigantic tribe, they were to
be described as the “very _tallest_ types of their class,” any statement
in reply, to the effect that some trustworthy voyager had examined
certain races of the extreme south of America, and had found that they
were both short and thin, would be neither relevant in its facts nor
legitimate in its bearing. But if the controversialist who thus strove
to strengthen his case by the voyager’s authority, was at the same time
fully aware that the voyager had seen not only the diminutive Fuegians,
but also the gigantic Patagonians, and that he had described these last
as very gigantic indeed, the introduction of the statement regarding the
smaller race, when he wholly sank the statement regarding the larger,
would be not merely very irrelevant in the circumstances, but also very
unfair. Such, however, is the style of statement to which the author of
the “Vestiges” has (I trust inadvertently) resorted in this controversy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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