“To the natural objection that the earth does not now produce men, lions, and dogs, Epicurus replies that the fecundity of the earth is now exhausted. In advanced age a woman ceases to bear children; a piece of land never before cultivated produces much more during the few first years than it does afterwards; and when a forest is once cut down, the soil never produces trees equal to those which have been rooted up. Those which are afterwards planted become dwarfish, and are perpetually degenerating. We are, however, he argues, by no means certain but there may be at present rabbits, hares, foxes, bears, and other animals, produced by the earth in their perfect state. The reason why we are backward in admitting it is, that it happens in retired places, and never falls under our view; and, never seeing rats but such as have been produced by other rats, we adopt the opinion that the earth never produced any.” (_Fénélon’s Lives of the Ancient Philosophers._) “In the first place, there is no reason to suppose that, though life had been imparted by natural means, after the first cooling of the surface to a suitable temperament, it would continue thereafter to be capable of being imparted in like manner. The great work of the peopling of this globe with living species is mainly a fact accomplished: the highest known species came as a crowning effort thousands of years ago. The work being thus to all appearance finished, we are not necessarily to expect that the origination of life and of species should be conspicuously exemplified in the present day. We are rather to expect that the vital phenomena presented to our eyes should mainly, if not entirely, be limited to a regular and unvarying succession of races by the ordinary means of generation. This, however, is no more an argument against a time when phenomena of the first kind prevailed, than it would be a proof against the fact of a mature man having once been a growing youth, that he is now seen growing no longer..... Secondly, it is far from being certain that the primitive imparting of life and form to inorganic elements is not a fact of our times.” (_Vestiges of Creation._) [39] “_Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation_,” and “_Explanations, being a Sequel to the Vestiges_.” [40] The chapter in which this passage occurs originally appeared, with several of the others, in the _Witness_ newspaper, in a series of articles, entitled “Rambles of a Geologist,” and drew forth the following letter from a correspondent of the _Scottish Press_, the organ of a powerful and thoroughly respectable section of the old Dissenters of Scotland. I present it to the reader merely to show, that if, according to the author of the “Vestiges,” geologists assailed the development hypothesis in the fond hope of “purchasing impunity for themselves,” they would succeed in securing only disappointment for their pains:— “THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH.