I am still doubtful whether the means adopted by nature to ensure the preservation of species or races have been so inadequate that entire races are now extinct or lost.

    If there really are lost species, it can doubtless only be among the large animals that live on the dry parts of the earth; where man exercises absolute sway, and has compassed the destruction of all the individuals of some species which he has not wished to preserve or domesticate.  Hence arises the possibility that animals of the genera Palaeotherium, Anoplotherium, Megalonix, Megatherium, Mastodon, of M. Cuvier, and some other species of genera previously known

p. 45
are no longer extant in nature: this however is nothing more than a possibility.

    But animals living in the waters, especially the sea waters, and in addition all the races of small sizes living on the surface of the earth and breathing air, are protected from the destruction of their species by man.  Their multiplication is so rapid and their means of evading pursuit or traps is so great, that there is no likelihood of his being able to destroy the entire species of any of these animals.

    It is then only the large terrestrial animals that are liable to extermination by man.  This extermination may actually have occurred; but its existence is not yet completely proved.

    Nevertheless, among the fossil remains found of animals which existed in the past, there are a very large number belonging to animals of which no living and exactly similar analogue is known; and among these the majority belong to molluscs with shells, since it is only the shells of these animals which remain to us.

    Now, if a quantity of these fossil shells exhibit differences which prevent us, in accordance with prevailing opinion, from regarding them as the representatives of similar species that we know, does it not necessarily follow that these shells belong to species actually lost?  Why, moreover, should they be lost, since man cannot have encompassed their destruction?  May it not be possible on the other hand, that the fossils in question belonged to species still existing, but which have changed since that time and become converted into the similar species that we now actually find.

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p. 46
    Naturalists who did not perceive the changes undergone by most animals in course of time tried to explain the facts connected with fossils, as well as the commotions known to have occurred in different parts of the earth's surface, by the supposition of a universal catastrophe which took place on our globe.  They imagined that everything had been displaced by it, and that a great number of the species then existing had been destroyed.

    Unfortunately this facile method of explaining the operations of nature, when we cannot see their causes, has no basis beyond the imagination which created it, and cannot be supported by proof.

    But why are we to assume without proof a universal catastrophe, when the better known procedure of nature suffices to account for all the facts which we can observe?

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