The writer's object in putting forward his views
in the present imperfect manner is to submit them to the tests of
other minds, and to be made aware of all the facts supposed to be
inconsistent with them. As his hypothesis is one which claims
acceptance solely as explaining and connecting facts which exist
in nature, he expects facts alone to be brought forward to
disprove it, not _a priori_ arguments against its probability.
He then refers to some of the geological "principles" expounded by Sir
Charles Lyell on the "extinction of species," and follows this up by
saying:
To discover how the extinct species have from time to time been
replaced by new ones down to the very latest geological period, is
the most difficult, and at the same time the most interesting,
problem in the natural history of the earth. The present inquiry,
which seeks to eliminate from known facts a law which has
determined, to a certain degree, what species could and did appear
at a given epoch, may, it is hoped, be considered as one step in
the right direction towards a complete solution of it.
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