Such facts as these are absolutely fatal to the hypothesis of development; and geology abounds with them. Indeed, through all her archives, we search in vain for facts that show any thing like a passage of one species, genus, or family, into another. Certain distinct types characterize the different formations up to a certain period, when there is a sudden change; and in the subsequent strata we find animals and plants entirely different from those that have disappeared. The new races are, indeed, often of a higher grade than those that preceded them, but could not have sprung from them. The true theory of animal and vegetable existence on our globe appears to be this: Such natures were placed upon the earth as were adapted to its varying condition. When the earliest group was created, such were the climate, the atmosphere, the waters, and the means of subsistence, that the lower tribes were best adapted to the condition of things. That group occupied the earth till such changes had occurred as to make it unsuited to their natures, and consequently they died out, and new races were brought in; not by mere law, but by divine benevolence, power, and wisdom. These tribes also passed away, when the condition of things was so changed as to be uncongenial to their natures, to give place to a third group, and these again to a fourth, and so on to the present races, which, in their turn, perhaps, are destined to become extinct. From the first, however, the changes which the earth has undergone, as to temperature, soil, and climate, have been an improvement of its condition; so that each successive group of animals and plants could be more and more complicated and perfect; and therefore we find an increase and development of flowering plants and vertebral animals. And yet, from the beginning, all the great classes seem to have existed, so that the changes have been only in the proportion of the more and less perfect at different periods. In short, we have only to suppose that the Creator exactly adapted organic natures to the several geological periods, and we perfectly explain the phenomena of organic remains. But the doctrine of development by law corresponds only in a loose and general way to the facts, and cannot be reconciled to the details. If that hypothesis cannot get a better foothold somewhere else, it will soon find its way into the limbo of things abortive and forgotten. I have now noticed, I believe, the principal sources of evidence in which the law hypothesis rests; and at the best, we find only a possibility, but rarely, if ever, a probability, that such a power exists in nature. I turn now, for a few moments, to the arguments on the other side; that is, against the hypothesis. _And first, it cannot explain the wonderful adaptation of animals and plants to their condition and to one another._