Agassiz, When I Saw Him Last, Had

The Best Opinion Now Is, That There Are Multitudinous Forms Which Are Not Sufficiently Differentiated To Be Distinctively Either Plant Or Animal, While, As Respects Ordinary Plants And Animals, The Difficulty Of Laying Down A Definition Has Become Far Greater Than Ever Before.

Next It Was Found That It Was Physiologically And Structurally The Same In The Plant, That It Was The Living Part Of The Plant, That Which Manifested The Life And Did The Work In Vegetable As Well As In Animal Organisms.

This View, As A Rounded Whole And In All Its Essential Elements, Has Very Recently Disappeared From Science. It Died A Royal Death With Agassiz.

I Accept Extinction As Best Explaining Disjoined Species. I See That The Same Cause Must Have Reduced Many Species Of Great Range To Small, And That It May Have Reduced Large Genera To So Small, And Of Families.

Natural Selection Is Not The Wind Which Propels The Vessel, But The Rudder Which, By Friction, Now On This Side And Now On That, Shapes The Course.