distinct species which unite with the utmost facility." (p. 257). Again, "there are many cases in which two pure species can be united with unusual facility, and produce numerous hybrid offspring, yet these hybrids are remarkably sterile. On the other hand, there are species which can be crossed very rarely, or with extreme difficulty, but the hybrids, when at last produced, are very fertile. Even within the limits of the same genus, these two opposite cases occur." (p. 256). And comparing in this respect, animals with plants; "if our systematic arrangements can be trusted, that is, if the genera of animals are as distinct from each other as are the genera of plants, then we may infer that animals more widely separated in the scale of nature, can be more easily crossed than in the case of plants; but the hybrids themselves are, I think, more sterile." (p. 252). That sterility in crossing, or in hybrids, will not serve as a test of specific differences, is very clear. The extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system, so that it can be fatally injured, even though the general health of the individual is unaffected; our great ignorance of what is, or is not injurious to it, as we see in our attempt to domesticate; the extremely unfavourable circumstances in which all experiments must necessarily be conducted, so that even the most careful observers will produce conflicting results: these and several other considerations prove that it could not practically be used as a test of species. The varying conditions of life seem to us a sufficient solution of the difficulty. The young are placed by one parent in conditions of life for which, by their hybrid organization, they are but half adapted. Their lives are thus, especially when young, extremely precarious; and the perfection of their system still more so. Did we know of anything else that could introduce an equally violent change, it would surely produce equal sterility.

One more extract, and we leave this portion of the subject.

Lastly, and this seems to me by far the most important consideration, new races of animals and plants are produced under domestication by man's methodical and unconscious power of selection, for his own use and pleasure he neither wishes to select, nor could select, slight differences in the reproductive system, or other constitutional differences correlated with the reproductive system. He supplies his several varieties with the same food; treats them in

nearly the same manner, and does not wish to alter their general habits of life. Nature acts uniformly and slowly during vast periods of time on the whole organisation, in any way which may be for each creature's own good; and thus she may, either directly, or more probably indirectly, through correlation, modify the reproductive system in the several descendants from any one species. Seeing this difference in the process of selection, as carried on by man and nature, we need not be surprised at some difference in the result."-p. 269.

Mr. Darwin's friends, and indeed he himself, expect that his views, if adopted, will work a revolution in natural history. That they open almost new fields for examination, there can be little doubt, "on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disue, on the direct action of external conditions, (p. 486.) and, we may add, on analogy of form as distinguished from affinity, on fertility, and so forth. But we cannot agree that a great change will be effected in the systematic study of nature. That systematists should be agreed on the arbitrary character of their arrangement, and that they should acknowledge that "well-marked varieties are incipient species," would certainly be an immense advantage as removing ambiguities. A consensus of naturalists will be required as to the precise amount of variation that in each case is to be regarded as specific. That Mr. Darwin's theory will be sufficiently widely adopted for this to be true, we have every expectation. But that the system for the future to be followed, can be in any way that of descent, that "our classifications will come to be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies, we have every reason to doubt. The means alluded to by Mr. Darwin-rudimentary organs, aberrant groups, embryology-are singularly insufficient for the work. would be better to abandon all attempt at classification by such affinities even when known. What advantage can there be in ranking the primrose and cowslip, because they are believed to have a common descent, as varieties, rather than as species?

It

"These plants differ considerably in appearance; they have a different flavour, and emit a different odour; they flower at slightly different periods; they grow in somewhat different stations; they ascend mountains to different heights; they have different geographical ranges; and lastly, according to very numerous experi

ments made during several years, by that most careful observer Gärtner, they can be crossed only with much difficulty. We could hardly wish for better evidence of the two forms being specifically distinct. On the other hand, they are united by many intermediate links, and it is very doubtful whether these links are hybrids; and there is, as it seems to me, an overwhelming amount of experimental evidence, showing that they descend from common parents."

"

Why should we add, "and consequently must be ranked as varieties?" (p. 50.)

That naturalists, who have professed the immutability of species, should have admitted into their classifications rules showing their belief in real affinity and relationship, has furnished Mr. Darwin with an unanswerable argumentum ad hominem towards them. To attempt to search amongst animals and plants, for traces of common ancestry, in order to arrange them, would be to introduce a rule that would cause endless differences of opinion, and to throw all classification into confusion.

Passing, with great regret, over Mr. Darwin's interesting chapter on Geographical Distribution, in which he relates experiments, and produces arguments that will be of the greatest value to the Christian apologist, we come now to the grave question of the extent of the applicability of his theory. The extent to which he carries it is simply appalling, for it is in contradiction to revelation.

"I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all the members of the same class. I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."—p. 484.

"The whole history of the world, as at present known, although of a length quite incomprehensible by us, will hereafter be recognised as a mere fragment of time, compared with the ages which

have elapsed since the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendents, was created."-p. 488.

We have shown that we are not to be frightened by so serious an abuse of a theory from frankly adopting all that the author has proved.

We feel convinced that the principal position maintained by this book, will be adopted by all naturalists, and by all thoughtful minds: but that any other mind, as calm and well balanced as Mr. Darwin's own, will hazard a proposition so thoroughly gratuitous as this with which he has concluded we cannot possibly believe. He labours under the disadvantage of the pride of parentage; we hope and trust that when his great work is forthcoming, he will not put forward any such frantic position.

"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled." (p. 489). Is it an ennobling idea that a pedigree which ends with, "who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God, is to be supplanted by a descent, as long as you please, from some Ante-Silurian cellule? That this is meant to apply to the human race, the following passage, which has been referred to more than once, shows but too clearly.

"I call, indeed, hardly doubt that all vertebrate animals having true lungs have descended by ordinary generation from an ancient prototype, of which we know nothing, furnished with a floating apparatus or swim-bladder. We can thus, as I infer from Professor Owen's interesting description of these parts, understand the strange fact that every particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs, notwithstanding the beautiful contrivance by which the glottis is closed. In the higher Vertebrata the branchiæ have wholly disappeared-the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop. like course of the arteries still marking in the embryo their former position."-p. 191.

All the arguments our author has adduced for the horrid genealogy he would assign to the human race, are now before the reader, and what do they amount to? All lungs were once swimbladders, and betray a fishy ancestry, the feetal gills tell the same story, and tails could only have been useful in the water!

When this is acknowledged, how puzzled Mother

Church will be! Baptism and holy water, and fishes for symbols, will show famously that she has unconsciously held this opinion all along but how much she will have to rewrite! Fancy Ash Wednesday and Memento homo quia piscis es, et in cete reverteris ! We have been fish, and, if bears may become whales, why not we? Topsy's 'Spects I growed," will become an article of faith; and the "Doctrine of Developments" will be universally adopted.

But this is too bad of Mr. Darwin, who knows as well as any man, how imperfect is our knowledge of facts, how far more imperfect our knowledge of causes. Surely the following considerations alone should have led him to be careful how he drew such immense conclusions from such small premises. It is anything but a mouse born of a mountain: it is a mountain of a mouse.

"If green woodpeckers alone had existed, and we did not know that there were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought that the green colour was a beautiful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting bird from its enemies; and consequently that it was a character of importance and might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I have no doubt that the colour is due to some quite distinct cause, probably to sexual selection. A trailing bamboo in the Malay Archipelago climbs the loftiest trees by the aid of exquisitely constructed hooks clustered around the ends of the branches; and this contrivance, no doubt, is of the highest service to the plant; but as we see nearly similar hooks on many trees which are not climbers, the hooks on the bamboo may have arisen from unknown laws of growth, and have been subsequently taken advantage of by the plant undergoing further modification and becoming a climber. The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they facilitate, or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals."-p. 197.

Can we be blamed for attributing the embryonic gills.