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the progressive theory of Geoffroy be true, in his sense, each class of animals ought to be progressive in its organic type.
It appears to me that this is not true.
Pray tell me your own views on this point.
（3.) There are ‘odd fish’ (as we say in jest) in the Old Red Sandstone.
Do these so graduate into crustaceans as to form anything like such an organic link that one could, by generation, come naturally from the other?
I should say, no, being instructed by your labors.
Again, allowing this, for the sake of argument, are there not much higher types of fish which are contemporaneous with the lower types (if, indeed, they be lower), and do not these nobler fish of the Old Red Sandstone stultify the hypothesis of natural generative development?
（4.) Will you give me, in a few general words, your views of the scale occupied by the fish of the Old Red, considered as a natural group?
Are they so rudimentary as to look like abortions or creatures derived from some inferior class, which have not yet by development reached the higher type of fish?
Again, I should say, no; but I long for an answer from a great authority like yours.
I am most anxious for a good general conception
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