that the proportion between the beetles that do, and do not fly, is different in the island to what is found elsewhere, which would be simply because the species that were best adapted for the situation flourished there the best.

Rudimentary organs are attributed by Mr. Darwin, in the main, to inheritance. They have been transmitted by an ancestor, to whom they were useful, to a successor to whom they are quite useless; and the process will have been that they have gradually become disused. "Nothing can be plainer than that wings are formed for flight, yet in how many insects do we see wings so reduced in size as to be utterly incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered together!" (p. 451.) But that such is the origin of all rudimentary organs we cannot possibly admit. Our author speaks of the mamma, which in male mammals retain their potentiality, and are merely not developed. We should be curious to see how, by his theory of disuse and inheritance, so singular a result has been produced. To us it seems not unnatural that, in the Creation, such an organ was given to the male ancestor that by him it might be transmitted, equally perfect potentially, to all his descendants, although it was to be of practical service only to his daughters. And in like manner we must say in reply to the needlessly offensive question flung by Mr. Darwin (p. 483.) at all believers in the Mosaic account of Creation, as to whether mammals "were created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother's womb," that such a conformation may have been created in the first instance that the rule might be established which was afterwards to be followed, and that thus, through the first parent a given tendency might be imparted to his offspring. Habit is ordinarily the sequel of many acts on the part of the individual, but the same tendency that habit confers can be inherited. It is hardly more wonderful that man should have been created in that state to which his posterity were to attain when they should have reached maturity, and with the marks about him indicating previous processes to which in fact he had not been subjected. Disuse, we should not have much difficulty in supposing to be a sufficient cause for the rudimentary character of the eyes of moles and other burrowing rodents, aided by the advantage that freedom from the irritation of the eye might give an individual or a family over its competitors; and so too "of the wings

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of birds inhabiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced to take flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying;" (p. 454.) and of the beetles we have mentioned: but Mr. Darwin must excuse us for asking for further proof that the whale is a lineal descendant of some mammal that needed teeth, besides the very singular" presence of teeth in foetal whales, which, when grown up, have not a tooth in their heads;" (p. 450.) and even besides, the black bear in North America, which seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water." (p. 184.) This is a rare instance with Mr. Darwin, of a wish to accept a fact because it suits his theory. It is unconscious unfairness, for we have already said that he deserves the highest praise for fairness of argument, but surely he must see that in this case the evidence is flagrantly insufficient to establish so improbable an event. It is not that the stomach of the bear was found on dissection to contain sea insects, but simply that an animal which swims as readily as the bear does, was believed to be swimming" with widely open mouth!" How could it possibly have fed on such sea insects, when its mouth is not furnished with the beautiful apparatus which enables the whale to retain its tiny food while it ejects the water that contained it?

Now that we have entered on this subject, earlier indeed than we had intended, we cannot help remarking upon Mr. Darwin's doctrine concerning tails. In those cases in which the tail is of absolute service to the animal, as a fly' flapper, considering the incalculable injury that flies, if unchecked, can inflict on large quadrupeds, he thinks that the individuals with the most useful tails would have had an advantage over their congeners; and in this there is nothing unreasonable. But he adds:

"Seeing how important an organ of locomotion the tail is in most aquatic animals, its general presence and use for many purposes in so many land animals, which in their lungs or modified swimbladders betray their aquatic origin, may perhaps be thus accounted for. A well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes, as a fly-flapper, an organ of prehension, or as an aid in turning, as with the dog, though the aid must be slight, for the hare, with hardly any tail, can double quickly enough."-p.

196.

This is repeated a little further on. "We may also believe that a part, formerly of high importance, has often been retained, (as the tail of an aquatic animal by its terrestrial descendants,) though it has become of such small importance that it could not, in its present state, have been acquired by natural selection-a power which acts solely by the preservation of profitable variations in the 'Struggle for Life.'" (p. 205.) So the bear slips into the water, and becomes the parent of whales, and the fish gets out of the water, and is represented in after years by dogs and cats! It is not our purpose at this moment to discuss the extent of the applicability of Mr. Darwin's theory; but surely he must feel that enormous and most improbable conclusions are not to be regarded as proved on such scanty demonstration. His argument is that the lung is a developed swim-bladder, and that it could not have come into existence except by improvement upon the swimbladder; therefore, all creatures that now have lungs, once swam; in their fishy state they wanted tails, and therefore we must not be astonished to find animals that have lungs also having tails. A further argument for the fishy origin of the human race our author gives, and we have already promised to produce it later. But is it not astonishing that it should be easier for Mr. Darwin to believe in this transmutation of terrestrial into aquatic animals, and of fish into beasts, than to believe that an animal was created with both lungs and tail?

To return, however, for the present, to the effects of use and disuse in producing variation. It is necessary for the validity of the theory, which we are quite prepared to adopt with Mr. Darwin, that use or disuse should produce an effect on the individual, and that the principle of inheritance should have the power to transmit the habit, which in the first instance may be called artificial rather than natural. This power of inheritance is very strong indeed, and it is our belief in its efficiency that leads us to assent to what Mr. Darwin has laid down regarding instincts. Some authors have said that those habits alone are transmitted which assist the animal in its natural pursuits. This is quite contrary to fact. The instance of the pointer seems to us to be conclusive. Mr. Darwin says he has seen a young pointer point and back other dogs the first time that it was taken out, (p. 213.) and a more artificial habit can hardly be imagined. Most peo

VOL. XLVIII.-Ne.. XCV.

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ple also could corroborate his statement that even "the oddest tricks" are inherited. In the very room in which we write there is a dog which was taken from its mother without having once seen her perform certain antics for which she had a fancy, but the puppy has inherited the tricks, and very droll they are, as well as useless to the dog itself. It is, then, nothing beyond belief that a habit should be inherited that has been strong enough to produce a physical effect, or that that habit should continue to have the same power of affecting the organization.

Taking this idea of inherited uses in a broad sense, it seems to us to include the various cases of instinct that Mr. Darwin has argued so skilfully, and with such success. His examination into the instinct of the bee is very interesting, but too lengthy for us to extract. We will content ourselves with a single instance, which is an example, in one view, of use, and in another of disuse.

We do not remember to have seen in any of the numerous works that put before us in a popular manner the natural history, and especially the entomology of the British Islands, any account of the slave-making ant, Formica sanguinea, so called from its red colour, captures a little black ant, (f. fusca) when in the pupa state, and, when they are fit for work, employs its captives as household slaves. One thing that is very singular in this "extraordinary and odious instinct" is, that males and fertile females of the slave species are found in their own communities alone. Perhaps, as with the bee, so with the ant, the larva of the male is deposited at a different time from that of the female, and the difference of treatment alone decides whether the female shall be fruitful or unfertile, which latter are the workers, and as they are often called, the neuters of the species. Instinct may tell the captor when the pups are to be taken, in order that they may be working members of the community, The slaves make no attempt to escape, for when the nest is disturbed, they work as actively as their masters in transporting the larvæ and pupæ into a place of safety. When a migration becomes necessary, the masters, who are twice the size of their slaves, carry the latter in their mouths to their new habitation. Mr. Darwin relates this to us as an eye-witness, (p. 219.) and it would be

difficult for us to find a naturalist on whose observation and accuracy we should more willingly rely.

On one occasion when the slaves were more numerous than usual, Mr. Darwin noticed that a few slaves were mingled with their masters in their out-door occupations. "In Switzerland the slaves habitually work with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in the morning and evening; and as Huber expressly states, their principal office is to search for aphides. The difference in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in England." (p. 221.)

Now, what should we expect as the probable results of a habit of this description, if it were exemplified, not in ants, but in men? We should say that it would certainly produce indolence and luxury; that it would sharpen skill and cunning in the method of capture, but that it would result in all the labour of the community being performed by those who have thus come to be unnaturally forced to be members of it. And are we to look amongst the ants, to whom the Wise Man sends the sluggard, for an example of such deterioration? Whether the British formica sanguinea will ever come to possess so many slaves as to be able to delegate to them its labours, we cannot foretell. The slaves, being all workers or unfertile females, cannot give their master the services of their offspring, and thus the slave-making ant is entirely dependant on the cargo of the slave ship. But, as the young of one of our migratory birds may be taken from the nest and separated from its kindred, and yet when the time of migration shall have come, is restless and uneasy, and if liberated would certainly follow its brethren across the sea: so the formica sanguinea has inherited the desire to make, and the knack of making slaves. How it originated who can say? But Mr. Darwin's conjecture is very plausible that the pupae of the formica fusca were originally taken for food, and some having come to maturity were useful to their captors. Thus the brood that possessed them would thrive more than their neighbours, and the ant that inherited most strongly the desire to bring home pupa, would have an advantage over other ants in the race for life.

If this be so, the taste for rearing slaves would be likely