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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

SPECIES
NOT TRANSMUTABLE,

NOR

THE RESULT OF SECONDARY CAUSES.

BEING A CBITICAL EXAMINATION OF

MR. DARWIN'S WORK ENTITLED "ORIGIN AND VARIATION
OF SPECIES."

BY C. R. BREE, ESQ., M.D., F.L.S.,

PHYSICIAN TO THE KSSKX AND COLCHESTER HOSPITAL.

Author of the "Birds of Europe, not observed in the British Isles."

Naturam expellee furca, tamen usque recurret.

HOR. Epist, Lib. i. 10.

LONDON:

GROOMBRIDGE AND SONS, 5, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART.

P R E F A C E .

THE following pages were written some mouths ago, and
their publication has been delayed by circumstances to which
I need not further allude. I offer the book now to the
consideration of the public, with a perfect consciousness
that it has many defects for which I must claim indul-
gence. The subject is one of deep importance; much more
so indeed than would appear to many, from a thoughtless
perusal of the work criticised. I trust I have dealt with
the book fairly. I entirely disclaim all personal feeling
in the strong language I have sometimes felt bound to
use. No one has derived greater pleasure than I have in
past days from the study of Mr. Darwin's other works,
and no one has felt a greater degree of regret that he
should have imperiled his fame, by the publication of

his treatise upon the " Origin of Species."

C. 11. B.

Colchester, Sep. Uth, 1860.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

RESULTS of Mr. Darwin's enquiries, and the inevitable tendency of
his theory. Objections to his inferences and conclusions. Develop-
ment progressive — according to the Darwinian hypothesis. Special
creation denied by Mr. Darwin. Want of proof of Mr. Darwin's
views. Domestic animals modify from alteration in the circum-
stances of existence. No analogy between such variation and that
of Nature. Pre-silurian world essential to Mr. Darwin's theory.
Utter want of proof of such a world. Lowest rocks. Mr. Mackie's
lirst traces. No proof of gradual succession of lower into higher
forms in time. Extinct animals. Lamarck — The Vestiges. Does
Mr. Darwin's law of variation exist in nature? Reasons for the
conclusion that it does not. 1 — 24

CHAPTER II.

MR. DARWIN'S arrangement of his subject. Variation and its causes.
Mr. Darwin's views of correlation untenable. Inheritance. Objections
to the doctrine that a pure form could have originated from an
imperfect variety. Law of variation not constant, therefore not a
natural law. If "divergence of form," a true doctrine, lines, must
have fallen in historic period. Non -variability of coral polypes
proved by Agassiz for two hundred thousand years. . 25 — 3G

CHAPTER III.

'•VARIATION under Nature" considered. Dr. B. Clemens, on fixity of
species. Owen on non-variability of dog. Wollaston on the dis-
tinction between species and varieties. Agassiz on permanence of
species, on the variation of domesticated animals, and the succession
of created beings. Darwin's definition of a species. Dr. Clemens,
Mr. Wollaston, and Dr. Carpenter's definitions. Monsters, a degra-
dation from normal standard, and frequently produced by unnatural
mode of life. Mr. Darwin's views on progressive development. Swim
bladder of fish used as an argument for transmutation of organs of
respiration — its fallacy. General view of Mr. Darwin's doctrine, as
contrasted with Nature as she is. Glance of progressiye develop-
ment from the monad to man, and the inevitable result of Mr.
Darwin's views, being the transmutatiuu of the ape into man.
Grave objections to ssueh an hypothesis. . . . 37 — 61

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

STRUGGLE for existence considered. Objections to Mr. Darwin's view
of the subject. Increase of animal life. Inconsistency of Mr.
Darwin's prophecy of the future earthly condition of 'mankind.
Natural selection. Does it exist? Reasons for disbelief in such a
force. Accidental variation. Origin of change into species, of some
varieties. Grave objections to such a view. Design, as evinced
in colour of animals. Mr. Darwin's strange views on the subject.
Other illustrations considered. Comparison of Christian vuavs of
the Creator in I860, with those of Cicero before the Christum era.
The "Vestiges" more plausible than Mr. Darwin's view. 62 — 77

CHAPTER V.

INTERCROSSING. Extinction. Objections to Mr. Darwin's views of the
latter as applied to his theory. Docs the less-favoured form become
extinct? Extinction a law of Nature. Proofs of displayed in the
records of geology. Owen on succession of new speetoff. "Dili-
gence of character" considered. Objections to proof from domestic
animals. Absence of all proof of transmutation of species. ^J^/ilo/m
triticoides. Dr. .Maclean's experience. Gartner and Kolreiitei'> it--
searches. Mr. Knight's views. Agassiz on hybrids. Mr. Darwin's
illustration of his subject by the simile of a huge tree. The author
adopts a similar illustration in answer. Mr. Darwin strains homo-
logics into identities. Creative wisdom displayed in adoption of
similar type in organization. Instances of adaptation adduced.
Human hand and foot. Thoracic duct; its beautifully adapted
mode of entrance into the reins. Difficulties of assuming that Mich
organs resulted by variation from animals in which they do not
exist! The blood; its various character in different animals; the
size of its disc. The lung. The Corpora Olicaria. Mr. Murray on
adaptation in Wellingtouia yiyunlta. Dr. Davy on adaptation in
growth of birds 78—103

CHAPTER VI.

LAW of variation considered. Use and disuse. Wings. Mr. Murray
on blind beetles. Wingless insects. Acclimatization. So-called
"habits" of flowers. Mummy seed. "Correlation of growth" con-
sidered under two propositions. Anthropoid apes. The Gorilla,
Chimpanzee, Orang-outang, and Gibbon. Great anatomical distinction
between the highest ape and man. Summary of their different
characters. Owen's deductions 104 — 120

CHAPTER VII.

CORRELATION of growth further considered. Mr. Darwin's views upon
the variable tendency of parts developed in an extraordinary manner.
His reasons unsatisfactory. Second proposition considered. Objec-
tion to the inference drawn from the proposition. Fertility of hybrids.
Mr. Darwin's views of special creation. Absurdity of assuming a

CONTEXTS.

common origin to the mammalia. Difficulties of theory. Absence
or rarity of transitional varieties, or the origin and transition of
organic beings with peculiar habit and structure. The Mustela
visnn. Natural selection only acting for the good of the indi-
vidual considered. Plying lemur. .... 121 — 135

CHAPTER VIII.

DIVERSIFIED habit considered. Mr. Darwin's illustrations unfortunate.
Transmutation of a bear into a whale. American woodpecker.
Frigate bird. Organs of extreme perfection and complication.
Light objective and substantive. The eye. Irresistible proof
against Mr. Darwin's theory draAvn from the structure of the eye.
Owen. Buckland on the vision of Trilobites. Nuttall on vision of
birds. Eyes of insect. Owen on the eyes of fishes, and his
deductions. 1 36— 149

CHAPTER IX.

ORGANS of little importance ; Mr. Darwin's views upon them considered.
The Aye-aye; Dr. Sandwith upon. Darwin's views upon the
assumed identity of bones in monkey, horse, bat, and seal. Use
of the skeleton. Owen upon the osteology of animated beings.
Mr. Darwin's belief that his doctrine would be upset if it could
be proved that the organs of one animal were formed for the
good of another. The challenge accepted, and the issue proved
against Mr. Darwin. The horse not a transmuted tapir. Difference
between instinct and habit. Mr. Darwin's views upon" the subject
confused. The cuckoo. Slave ants. Cells of hive bee. Neuter
insects. Mr. Darwin on accidental variation. The song thrush.
Mr. Darwin's canon "Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and
the weakest die." Dr. Maclean on the economy of Sphex sabulosus,
Limenitis Sibylla, and Apatura iris. Professor Goodsir on the
distinction between human consciousness and instinct. 150 — 181

CHAPTER X.

HYBRIDISM. Geoffrey St. Hilaire's deduction utterly opposed to the
Darwinian theory. " Imperfection of geological record. Admirable
remarks upon the subject from the "Spectator." Owen on the
succession of species in geology. Extinction nowhere sudden.
Development not in the line from weak to stronger form. Geo-
graphical distribution. Dr. Hooker a convert to Mr. Darwin's
views. The analogy between plants and animals, as it regards
Darwin's doctrine not to be sustained. Dr. Asa Grey's views
upon the distribution of plants and animals. Agassi/,; his views
upon the same subject. . . . . 182 — 200

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XI.

RUDIMENTARY organs. The whale a beautiful instance of design.
Mr. Darwin's views of the rudimentary teeth of the whale and calf
objected to. Strictures upon Mr. Lewis's article on the natural
selection theory, and upon the notice of Darwin's book in the
" Medico-Chirugical Review." Embryology. Error of Darwin's
statement about the larvae of insects. Mr. Crewe's list of larv;r.
Mr. Darwin's position on this part of the subject considered.
Professor Bennet. Bischoff. "Accidental" modification of bird's
wing. Simon on disease as a proof of design. . 207 — 235

CHAPTER XII.

THE discussion at Oxford. Professor Huxley and Dr. Hooker's
opinions considered. The opinion of a "Divine" upon secondary
causes. The inconsistency of such a belief with that of Revealed
Truth. Mr. Darwin's disciples not agreed upon the truth of Mr.
Darwin's book. The review in the "Quarterly" and extracts
therefrom. The milking of aphides by ants an erroneous observation.
Conclusion. . 236— 250

SPECIES NOT TEANSMUTABLE.

CHAPTER I.

"THEREFORE 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

II umber."

"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 in the wild rose or oak tree. Therefore I should
infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which
hare ever lived on this earth, have descended from one
primordial form into which life was first breathed." —
DABWIN, on the Origin and Variation of Species, page 483-4.

THERE can be no doubt about the meaning
of the above quotations. They express clearly and
with startling confidence the result of Mr. Darwin's
investigations into the origin of species. But
whatever may be their significance to the philo-

2 SPECIES NOT

sophic naturalist, these results have a still greater
interest to those who pass the pleasantest hours
of their life, in studying Nature as she exists in
the beautiful world by which we are surrounded.

To the former they revolutionize all the theories
upon which his principles of classification are
based; to the latter they are destructive of nil
that he has ever contemplated of the harmony- -
the adaptation— the design — which he has dreamt
that he saw in created things.

It cannot therefore be deemed an unnecessary
or uncalled-for task, to enquire critically into the
grounds upon which such conclusions have been
formed. The minds of the students of Nature
of all classes are strongly imbued with the idea.
that living things have been specially created to
serve certain purposes in the world — that they
in fact represent the ideas or constituent part*
of the great thought by which they were called
into being — that they are distinct, and though
variable, yet immutable organisms — not changing
one into another by any secondary law or law-.
but existing as they were first produced; carrying
out the Design by which their structure was
adapted to their mode of life and position in the
world.

It is upon no slight grounds that such a belief
will be surrendered. There is so much evident
Truth in the congruity of Nature — so much that
is convincing in its harmony — so much that speaks
in clear and unmistakeable language of a Great
First and Final Cause — that the mind instinc-

TRANSMUTABLE. ?>

tively repels anything which attempts to weaken
its convictions, or demolish the groundwork of
its faith.

And before this can be finally accomplished,
there must be not only a rational and well-ar-
gued and convincing case made out by the assailing
party, but there must be a complete change in
the human mind ! The highest powers of its
reason, those by which the greatest triumphs have
been effected, its inductive faculties must give
way to a cold but implicit belief in assumed
facts, which that reason clearly tells him never
could have been realities.

Mr. Darwin has presented us with what he
considers the first of these alternatives. I am
either unreasonably sceptical, or the change al-
luded to has not been effected in my mind. I
have read over his book most carefully, and I
am bound to confess that I am a stronger be-
liever in a first cause and a special creation than
ever; for I am now fortified with what I con-
ceive to be the failure of a man of deservedly
high reputation to convince me that I am in
error.

In the passages above quoted from Mr. Darwin,
he states that he "believes that all animals have
descended from at most only four or five pro-
genitors, and plants from an equal or lesser
number;" and subsequently he "infers that pro-
bably all organic beings have descended from some
one primordial form into which life was first
breathed."

4 SPECIES NOT

Let us briefly examine the inference first,-—

If every living thing has descended from one
form, it is quite clear that man was not a sepa-
rate creation. Originating in some undescribed
and unintelligible primordial organism, he has
been progressing through countless ages by the
principles of "natural selection," "modification of
form," and "divergence of character/' until having
passed through the various phases of organic life,
he ultimately became a monkey, and then — a
man.

Now there is no possibility of getting away
from this position, if Darwin's book is true. The
changes taking place through "countless ages,"
myriads of years in fact before the oldest known
geological epoch, the latter being itself a period
too immense for human intellect to grasp!

I need riot stop a moment in endeavouring to
prove the vast and fearful interests which are
involved in such a conclusion. We are told that
in discussing a scientific question, (and I agree
in the propriety of the rule,) that we must not
mix it up with proof which may be obtained from
the Sacred Writings. But the question as I have
placed it; or rather as Mr. Darwin has raised it,
has gone far beyond the limits of a scientific
discussion. Mr. Darwin, it is true, lu;s carefully
avoided opening the wider issue by reference to
Biblical authority, but he has arrived at a point
which has struck at the foundation of all the
great truths which the Bible teaches, and therefore
it is incumbent upon any one who enters into

TRANSMUTABLE. 5

a discussion of the question, to demand clear and
undoubted proof of the doctrines upon which it
is founded.

Now it is because I consider Mr. Darwin's
position untenable —his facts doubtful — his rea-
soning unsound— and his deductions untrue, that
I venture, with a deep sense of my own short-
comings, to enter the list with him in a fair and
open manner,' and to state distinctly, but without
flinching, that I think the grounds of my dis-
belief can be clearly sustained. But it may be
said, why argue from Mr. Darwin's inferences?
Let us therefore examine for a moment his con-
clusion.

It must be borne in mind, as will appear more
clearly when I come to analyze his arguments,
that Mr. Darwin considers all species of one genus
to have arisen from one parent, all genera from
one representative of an order, and all orders
from one member of a class; and all members
of a class from one member of a sub-kingdom.
Here he stops short in his "conclusions ;" going
one step further in his "inferences," and believing
that all "sub-kingdoms" arose from one sole
representative.

Jt is very essential to bear in mind that, ac-
cording to this theory, there has been a progressive
development of animal form. Now the animal
kingdom is at present divided by naturalists into
five great divisions — the Vertebrate, the Mollus-
cous, the Articulate, the Radiate, and the Proto-
zoa, sub-kingdoms. Of these man is the head

*i SPECIES NOT

of the first, and consequently is the highest de-
velopment of Mr. Darwin's original primordial
vertebrate form. He was not then, according to
this doctrine, specially created.

It will be seen further on, that Mr. Darwin
arrives at his ultimate typical form, not by any
special design or creation, but that in the cour>e
of myriads of ages, varieties of form occurring
"accidentally" or otherwise have given certain ani-
mals a superiority over others in the "struggle for
existence," which is the great moving spring at
the root of all his speculations. It is then quite
clear that if these views are correct, it matters
but little whether Mr. Darwin gives us four or
five progenitors, or only one. In either case he
denies a special creator either to plants or animals,
and thus at one blow destroys all that we have
so long held and cherished among the riches of
our knowledge — that beautiful adaptation <»t' strue-
ture to its varied uses, which some have called
design, life, motion, development; which others
have called evidence of Natural Religion; and
above all, man himself, with his attributes — sen-
sation, thought, consciousness, in a word reason
—all these are swept away as a proof of special
creation; — they are but the results of fortuitous
variation, acting without order or even natural
law !

But differing, as I do, from Mr. Darwin in his
interpretation of facts, and denying, as 1 do. the
soundness of his premises and the correctness of
his deductions, I am quite willing to admit that lie

TRANSMUTABLE. 7

never intended that the theory he has endeavoured
to establish, should carry with it the fearful
conclusion to which I have alluded. A recent
writer in one of our popular weekly publications
contends that there is nothing irreligious in Mr.
Darwin's views, and that a Great First Cause
may act with as much design by secondary means
as he can by special creation. In other words,
this writer would have us believe that the first
primordial form, from which all others sprung,
contained within itself the elements of perpetual
change, each variation being adapted to the ever-
varying condition of the world. Now if this
were true, variation of species would be a con-
stant natural law acting from all time with definite
pre-ordained precision and regularity ! But Mr.
Darwin does not lay claim to that which is in
itself a manifest absurdity, for the very word
variation implies a type or normal form, from
which the species varies.

Whatever however may be the modus operandi
of Mr. Darwin's law of variation, in affecting the
astounding results which he ascribes to it, there
can, I think, be no doubt that we are entitled
to have something like evidence of the correctness
of his facts, and the soundness of his arguments.

If Mr. Darwin had limited his work to the
simple question of the "Variation of Species," I
could readily have joined in much of the praise
with which the book has been received by some
who have a knowledge of Comparative Anatomy,
and by a great many who are entirely ignorant

8 SPECIES NOT

of it, as is evinced by their reviews. But when
the question is widened so as to attempt to
prove that by a new and partial law, a fish, a
reptile, a bird, or a mammal are merely different
expressions of the same thing— mere modifications
by "natural selection" and "divergence of form"
of the same primordial organism, he opens a
question so vast and so utterly opposed to all
our preconceived notions — so contrary, as I con-
ceive, to all the knowledge which Anatomy mid
Physiology teach us, and so utterly destructive
of all belief in the constant operation of a Great
First Cause, that it will be readily conceded before
we assent to such a doctrine, we have a right to
demand that it should be founded on some kind
of proof. Now I have carefully read over Mr.
Darwin's work, and I cannot from beginning to
end find one atom of proof of the transmutation
of species, upon which the integrity of the whole
doctrine depends.

There is a great deal said, it is true, of such
arguments as are to be derived from the ready
belief that a flying fish might be converted by
"natural selection," etc., into a bird! How the
flying Lemur might have its membranous appen-
dage changed into the wing of a bat ! How the
eye of the eagle might have been "modified," and
"varied," and developed from the black pigmentary
spot of the crustacean; or, how a bear swimming
about with open mouth to catch flies, might have
been transmuted in due course into a mighty
whale! But when we ask for proof— for facts

TRANSMUTABLE.

to argue upon — for reasons for believing— for the
scientific basis of a rational induction — alas! we
get nothing but the doctrine of "natural selection !"
of "modification of form !" of "divergence of cha-
racter !" of "correlation of growth !" or we are
cooly referred with inimitable equanimity to that
dark unfathomable abyss, the "Imperfection of the
Geological Record !"

That domestic animals of the same genus will
modify, as Mr. Darwin has shewn, no one ever
doubted. That climate, habit, difference in food,
and careful and judicious crossing will alter the
races of animals, as to certain unimportant points
of structure, is a truth which no naturalist ever
denied. But the pigeon reared by the fancier is
still a pigeon ; the short-horned ox and the Devon
are still most unmistakably bovine; the racer and
the cart-horse still proclaim their brotherhood; the
greyhound and the spaniel are still dogs ! Granted,
if you will, they may have been derived from the
same stock. Yet how immensely different is the
question of such a modification from that which
by any process of natural change, could convert
the water-breathing fish into the air-breathing
mammal, or the bird with air-filled bones — (so
beautifully adapted to give it lightness and buoy-
ancy in the atmosphere,) and its complex flying
apparatus, into the crawling reptile, the fish, or
the quadruped!

Not only is there no proof tendered of anything
approaching to such conversions as these, but the
author has been forced to indulge in speculations

10 SPECIES NOT

the most improbable. For instance, Mr. Darwin,
with commendable candour, admits that his whole
theory tumbles to pieces unless the world has
existed for unnumbered ages before the siluriaii
epoch — the lowest fossiliferous stratum known to
geologists. It is clear that the hypothesis must
fail if this is the udawn of creation," for we find
numerous fossil forms presenting a tolerably high
organization. Below this there is no record of
life. The time which geologists compute must
have passed since this period, is far too vast for
the mind to grasp. One of the latest geological
writers however, Mr. Mackie, in his "First Traee-
of Life on the Earth," gives us some data upon
which a tolerably approximate calculation may In-
formed.—

uThe greatest amount of sediment which, ac-
cording to our present information, can be per-
manently laid down in our deep waters over the
range of our present seas, would probably not
exceed in the aggregate, including even our littoral
accumulation, a coating of more than three inches
thick in ten thousand years; and yet we have at
least a minimum thickness of upwards of eighty
thousand feet consolidated sedimentary rock to
explain as the result of natural agencies in past
time. "—(Page 126.)

Thus we may calculate from the minimum
thickness that at least three billions two hundred
millions of years have passed since the tirst known
living organism was deposited in its rocky grave!
And yet it is absolutely necessary for Mr. Darwin

TRANSMUTABLE. 11

to assume that this is but a fragment in the
world's history!

But is there any proof of an animated world
prior to the silurian epoch? — Not a vestige. And
yet we are told by Mr. Darwin, to believe that
an equally long period at least occurred before,
the evidences of which are still buried beneath
the sea; and upon this merely gratuitous assump-
tion we are at once to surrender our belief in
special creation and design !

I may be permitted however to remark here,
that two billions and a fifth of years is no mean
fraction of time. If we count two hundred a
minute, it will take us nine years, or nearly,' to
count a billion. Surely this is something in the
record of the past; and yet it tells us nothing
of the transmutation of species !

In the first of all fossiliferous rocks — the Cam-
brian, what do we find? — Sertularians, Anrielidans,
arid Trilobites, representing the Radiate and Ar-
ticulate sub-kingdoms of modern naturalists.
Some traces also of sea-weed have been discovered
by Mr. Salter, at Moel-y-ci, near Bangor, and
others have been described in Skiddaw slates by
Professor Me' Coy. (Mackie, p. 149.) When we
get a little higher up in the scale— into the true
silurian, we find the forms much more numerous.
We have mollusca represented by well-developed
and peculiar species in almost all its divisions,
namely, Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, Lamellibranchiata,
( Holostornatous Gasteropods, allied to our snails,)
Cephalopoda, containing representatives of the

12 SPECIES NOT

beautiful nautilus, which skims along the surface
of our own seas, and the delicate Cleodora, one
of the most lovely and fragile monuments of the
past. The class Annulosa is represented by some
remarkable forms. Star-fishes like those we can
pick up on our own coast, only differing in some
real or imaginary structure; the curious Crinoid
still represented in our fauna, and those wood-
louse-like crustaceans, the Trilobites, of which
Burrneister and the Kay Society have given us
i in mortal representations.

It is clear then that Mr. Darwin's world could
not have commenced here, for we have a host
of once-living things in these Cambrian and Silu-
rian rocks, representing plants, and four out of
the five great divisions of the animal kingdom.

Well, to get over this difficulty, Mr. Darwin
creates in his imagination another world of an
indefinite length, but at least as long before the
silurian as the time which has passed away since.
1 must beg the reader's particular attention to
this imaginary unknown geological formation ; but
for the present I will leave it, and say a word
or two about the immense record of which, thanks
to the researches of Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyall.
and others, we do know a great deal. And what
does it tell us of the transmutation of species';
absolutely nothing!

Through this immensity of space animal life
has neither diverged in form to any amount, or
has had differentiated by the "law" of variation
any additional organs. // has not become tram*-

TRANSMUTABLE. 13

muted. There is not in this three billions and
two hundred millions of years a single form which
Mr. Darwin can bring forward as transitional
from one phase of being to another. The won-
derful records of geology display a succession of
life during the past period which it occupies, as
remarkable as it is positive in its details. We do
not, it is true, as some have erroneously inferred,
and, as according to Mr. Darwin's views, we ought
to have done, find a gradual succession of the lower
into the higher organism. On the contrary, there
are evident marks of degeneration in some forms,
while others are exalted. We see in fact, perfect
adaptation of structure to the mode and the means
of life. Where now shall we see the modified
representative of the huge Saurian which lived
in an atmosphere, and in a condition of the
earth, formed, I will not say specially for, but in
accordance with its peculiar structure. Look
again at the remains of the Mammoth, or the
Mastodon, and other allied monsters, which have
long since become extinct. They do not speak
of a progressive development, or a passage in the
transition of a lower to a higher form !

But like every other class of organisms in the
geological record, these extinct animals tell their
own tale, and display in language which no one
can misunderstand, that in every great period of
geological history the world has been peopled by
creatures adapted to its physical and climatic
condition, and that this has been done by distinct
acts of special creation, by Him whose wisdom

14 SPECIES NOT

our finite minds are too apt to interpret and
criticise. Instead of studying the works of nature
with the light which we possess, and endeavouring
to discover by the aid of the highest and most
cultivated reason, the different steps in the great
plan of creation; Mr. Darwin, and those who
follow him, have erected a system of their own.
which, without displaying the power and the
beauty of Infinite Wisdom, has from beginning
to end marked upon it the imperfections and
often bungling creations of a human intellect.

It is the object of the following pages to shew
that Mr. Darwin's case is not proved, and t hat-
consequently it cannot supersede that theory of
special creation, of which we have the most con-
vincing proof.

Before we examine however more minutely
into the grounds upon which Mr. Darwin's whole
theory is based, let us consider for a moment
two propositions.

First. What does Mr. Darwin's theory really
mean ?

Most people in these reading days are aware
that previous to the appearance of Mr. Darwin's
book, there have been brought before the world
two great speculations about the origin and de-
velopment of species. Lamarck, like Darwin, a
givat naturalist, and who had a more intimate
acquaintance with species than perhaps any other
man of his day, conceived the extraordinary no-
tion not only that all living things originated in
one primordial form, but that they were developed

TRANSMUTABLE. 15

in successive ages into different orders and classes,
by a change produced in the animal from use.
That is to say, an animal, whether mollusk, fish,
reptile, or bird, might by the constant use of any
one organ produce a permanent alteration in it,
arid thus become gradually changed into a creature
having altogether different habits, form, functions,
and development.

In 1854 was published the "Vestiges of a
Natural History of Creation," in which the author
admitting that there was a glimmer of truth in
the theory of Lamarck, proceeded to demolish it
by endeavouring to prove that the Creator peo-
pled the earth with living forms, not at one time
only, but at successive periods, and not by actual
creation, but by the operation of a certain law,
by which development in living structures was
altered or arrested at different points, thus pro-
ducing transmutation of species, and adapting a
form living, we will say in water, to one living
in air; thus believing, like Lamarck, in ultimate
results, but differing as to the modus operandi.

The author of the "Vestiges," however, went
further than Lamarck in believing that his pri-
mordial organism arose, not by a positive and
distinct act of creation, but also by a law, still
thought to be in operation, through" which animal
or vegetable forms were brought into being by
the mere commingling under electrical or other
forces of the chemical elements of which they were
composed ; in other words, he believed with Bur-
meister and others in "spontaneous generations."

16 SPECIKS NOT

Now Mr. Darwin goes with Lamarck and the
u Author of the Vestiges" in the main and im-
portant parts of their theories. But he goes
further, and believes not only in the transmutation
of species, but also of families, orders, and cln-
and also in the origin of all in one primordial
form, "into which the breath of life was first
breathed."

The only real difference between Mr. Darwin
and his two predecessors, is this: — that while
the latter have each given a mode by which
they conceive the great changes they believe in
have been brought about, Mr. Darwin does no
such thing. Reduced to its simplest expression,
he believes in a law of variation not acting
uniformly, but producing here one form, there
another,— which said forms having acquired
through this law an addition to, or alteration
in their structure, have transmitted this pecu-
liarity through a series of ages, by which time
another change has taken place in one or more
members of the descendants of the altered ani-
mal, which, again passing through a great number
of generations, altering gradually through each,
becomes again changed, and that this process,
acting upon all organized forms, has, during
unnumbered ages, produced the different forms
of man, quadruped, bird, reptile, tish, mollusk,
aimelidan, radiata, protozoan, and plant. He
further believes that there never has been any
special act of creation, except that of the first
undescrihed and imaginable form!

TRANSMUTABLE. 17

Now let me ask any candid inquirer, in what
does this theory differ from that of the "Vestiges?"
Why, in reality, I answer, nothing, except in
less plausibility. The author of the " Vestiges" says,
development is arrested or altered, and that thus
forms are changed by what he calls natural law.
Mr. Darwin merely re-states, the fact without
offering any explanation. He says that there
is a law of variation throughout nature. What
can this be except a law of development? The
two ideas are in fact precisely the same, although
expressed in different language; the one shewing
how his law of development produces varieties,
the other merely shewing in the most ingenious
way imaginable, how these varieties ultimately
become different species. The one believes his
law of development has been brought into ope-
ration by Creative Will at different periods of
the earth's history. The other that that law is
a principle acting inequally, irregularly, or for-
tuitously.

Again, in what does Mr. Darwin differ from
Lamarck? They both believe in the same results;
but while the latter has given a means by which
he thinks his changes were brought about, the
former simply takes those changes, that is to
say, variations, and endeavours to shew how
they produced, by progression through endless
ages, all the classes of living things in the world !

The theories of Lamarck, and the "Vestiges,"
have been long since condemned as unsound, by
all the leading naturalists of the age. But Mr.

18 SPECIES NOT

Darwin's have been received with much more
favour, although, I think, the same arguments
which condemned the former may be brought
with stronger force against the latter. Mr.
Darwin is a man of high reputation, and his
work is written with fairness and candour, and
is submitted full of doubt from the author's
pen. There are difficulties which Mr. Darwin
knows full well must be surmounted before his
work can be received as the development of a
sound theory. These objections he has himself
for the most part anticipated and combated ; but
before we look into this part of the subject, it
may be profitable to say a few words upon, — t

Secondly, Does Mr. Darwin's law of variation
actually exist in nature?

That species vary I fully admit: that they
do so by the operation of a natural law, I am
equally confident is not true. It is quite clear
that a natural law cannot be special or selec-
tive, for it would thus at once lose its claim
to the title of a law. If you take a pigeon,
or an ox, and alter its habits of life, you place
it under circumstances it was never designed to
occupy. You pamper it with food of the finest
quality, and just as the larva of the worker bee
is fed up into greater size, and from a state
of barrenness to one of fertility; so the pigeon
will become altered both in size and colour, and
form and fertility. In its wild state the blue
rock builds once or twice a year; when you
have domesticated it, and crossed it, and altered

TRANSMUTABLE. 19

its mode of living, it will breed seven or eight
times a year, or oftener. I by no means admit
that you could convert it by this means into a
tumbler or a carrier; still less do I hold that
you could by any means change it into an elephant
or a whale, but I mention the fact here to draw
attention to the immense difference which there
is between the varieties produced by domestication,
and those which occur in a state of nature.
Grow a plant in a strong, rich, highly-manured
soil, and note how different it will be from that
grown in a poor one, — how much more inclined
to sport into varieties. The fact is too obvious
and well-known to require illustration.

How variable also is the plumage of birds kept
in confinement. Look at our domestic ducks, or
our barn-door fowls, and compare them again
with the wild duck or the pheasant. This, I
contend, is an abnormal effect produced by
altered treatment. If it were the result of a
natural law, it ought to obtain equally with
animals or plants in a state of nature, and this
I entirely deny. The naturalist gets a great
number of what he terms closely -allied species,
and immediately the fact is seized hold of to
prove a law of variation. But did it never
occur to Mr. Darwin that the rules which na-
turalists often follow in determining species are
very arbitrary. Are not forms frequently asso-
ciated together or separated from each other by
characters which have no real importance?

Nothing, in fact, can be more absurd than

20 SPECIES NOT

the modern system of species-making. A man,
often without any knowledge of comparative
anatomy, the only sound basis of classification,
will take a series of birds or insects from a
country of which he personally knows nothing.
He separates the former according to some con-
spectus, and then noting a white band here or
a black one there, or a difference in size, imme-
diately makes it into a species, invents for it a
name as long as its wing, founded doubtless upon
very correct Greek, puts his own name to it as
its discoverer, and sends it forth to the world
as a newly-determined species. A year or two
after a naturalist visiting the country finds that
after all the species was merely a local variety,
the effect of climate and food, which, if left
alone, would have gone back to its parent form
again.

Now this is going on every day. To look
well these species must have tremendously long
Greek derivations to distinguish them. All the
old sensible expressive names employed by such
men as Temminck are tabooed as not being "up
to the state of science." This «has been one
fruitful source of the present state of natural
history; all our species are in confusion, and of
course the circumstance is gladly laid hold of
by Mr. Darwin as corroborating his views.

Be this as it may, a really good naturalist
will always detect the species in the variety.
How is this? Simply because the variety always
carries with it some character or other which

TRANSMUTABLE. 21

links it with the species. If variation were, as
Mr. Darwin suggests, a law of nature, the change
ought to be so constant and so marked as to
enable the naturalist to say, "This is an or-
ganic permanent change, brought about by the
operation of a natural law: it is not functional,
produced by excessive or deficient nutriment, or
by crossing with another species. No! I recog-
nise in this organism merely a change which I
see produced by a law in operation everywhere.
This, therefore, is not a variety at all; it is a
distinct species;" and he would name it ac-
cordingly.

But is this the fact? Is it not notorious that
though varieties do occur, often most numerously,
yet the event is entirely exceptional. What are
they compared to the myriads of well-marked
species which, if left alone in the condition
designed for them in nature, pass on through
thousands of years unaltered? Where, then, is
the law of variation? You can only illustrate
variety from the effects which you abnormally
produce in confinement. And how weak are the
arguments often used even to prove this.

Mr. Darwin says that fancy pigeons are all
descended from the common blue rock, and many
other naturalists hold the same opinion, because
the peculiar marks of the ublue rock" now and
then appear in the wings and tails of the
pouter and the short-beaked tumbler. But surely
this may have arisen equally well from an
accidental cross with the domesticated blue rock,

22 SPECIES NOT

which is the favourite bird for making pies,
;iml kept in almost every dove-cote. Mr. Darwin
says it is incredible that this should have pro-
duced the "sport," or that these different varieties
of pigeons were descended from aboriginal stocks,
having similar markings.

I really do not think that this part of the
question is worth an argument. It only illus-
trates, even if Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of this
original descent from the blue rock were true,
that you may, by domestication and careful
crossing, produce varieties having but little re-
semblance to their original parent. I Jut the
organization, the structure, the functional life,
the sum-total, in fact, of what constitutes a
pigeon, does that differ in the two birds? Not
in the slightest. There is no divergence towards
anything else but a pigeon. And surely if this
crossing and domestication lias been going on
for thousands of years, (Mr. Darwin admits a
term of five thousand years,) we might in that
time have had the development of some abnor-
mity of structure, which would have shewn a
"divergence of form," tending either towards
the mammal above, or the reptile beneath it in
the scale of existence! Mr. Darwin, however,
conceals these mysterious transformations in the
dark, unknown, and fathomless past.

But the question suggests another idea. If
not the slightest vestige of such a change has
been visible in the pigeon by "variation under
domestication," has there been any divergence

TRANSMUTABLE. 23

ever discovered in the wild blue rock during the
last five thousand years, under the operation of
Mr. Darwin's law of what he terms "natural se-
lection ?" Why, surely if man could by crossing
and selection produce such a variety of forms, the
other great principle, though acting slower, ought
to have borne some fruit? Why have we not des-
cendants of the blue rock in the wild state with
the form of the "short-beaked tumbler," the "pou-
ter," or the "fantail?" But that there are none
such known, Mr. Darwin adduces as one of the
strong points of his theory of their origin. No !
the "blue rock" still keeps its place unaltered and
unchanged in the great scheme of nature, adapted
to its position by a wise Creator. Designed to
fulfil a destiny in the living world, it has re-
mained unchanged in habit and structure, since
it came into being by the fiat 'of an all-omni-
potent and never-dying God.

And so I believe with the rest of nature. We
shall, by and bye, as the arguments open out,
see the groundless nature of this natural selection
myth. It is not, in fact, a force in nature at
all. It is not design, for that would spoil Mr.
Darwin's theory altogether. It is not a natural
law, for this cannot act partially or by chance.
As well might we say the liver secreted bile
one day, and the kidneys the next. It cannot
be a principle attached to matter when first
created, or else it would be guided by natural
law, which we have seen it is not. It cannot
be a force of "necessity," for there is not one

'1\ SPECIES NOT

i

single proof to be advanced in favour of such
a principle or force, as attached to living beings.
If it is anything, it is mere chance, — giving to
the stronger, power over the weaker, — and such,
I believe, is all that can be claimed for, or in
fact all that is meant by "natural selection."

TRANSMUTABLE. 25

CHAPTER II.

LET us now look a little closer into some of
the arguments by which Mr. Darwin's ingenious
hypothesis has been built up.

The work is divided into fourteen chapters,
and we are told it is only an abstract of a
much larger book, to be published hereafter. The
first chapter treats of "Variation under Domes-
tication." The causes of variability Mr. Darwin
considers, (after alluding to the difference of life
and habits, and excess of food,) to be an alter-
ation in the reproductive elements, causing a
difficulty in inducing the animal to breed in
confinement. "Nothing is more easy than to
tame an animal, and few things more difficult
than to get it to breed freely under confinement
even in the many cases where the male and female
unite." And he illustrates this as follows: —
"Carnivorous animals, even from the tropics, breed
in this country pretty freely under confinement,
with the exception of the plantigrades, or bear
family ; whereas carnivorous birds, with the rarest
exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs."

With singular inconsistency Mr. Darwin admits
in the next passage, — "When on the one hand
we see domesticated animals and plants, though
often weak and sickly, yet breeding quite freely
under confinement; and on the other hand, when

26 SPECIES NOT

we see individuals, though taken young from a
state of nature, perfectly tamed, long-lived, and
healthy, (of which I could give numerous in-
stances,) yet having their reproductive system so
seriously affected by unperceived causes, as to
fail in acting, we need not be surprised at
this system when it does act under confinement,
acting not quite regularly, and producing offspring
not perfectly like their parents, or variable."-
(Page 9.)

Now this, which is Mr. Darwin's first cause of
variation, is a perfectly gratuitous assumption.
Ask any canary or pigeon-fancier if he finds any
difficulty in getting his birds to breed, and then
ask him if, being sure of his stock, is the produce
liable to great variation? All breeders are aware
that error in food, and breeding in and in, are
the great causes of variation; and both these
are unnatural, and therefore not likely to serve
the law of variation theory in a state of nature.
That there should be a difficulty in inducing
birds or beasts of prey to breed in confinement
is riot at all astonishing, when we reflect upon
the altered condition of life to which they are
exposed. But how can this in the slightest
degree be brought to bear upon any assumed
alteration in the reproductive organs in a state
of nature? In the forced and unnatural con-
dition to which they are subjected, it cannot for
a moment be a matter of surprise if the young,
when they do breed, are not always of normal
form. The garden "sports" do not bear upon

IRAN SMUT ABLE. 27

the question at all, inasmuch as they are gen-
erally the result of crossing.

The passage about habit as affecting variation
is very brief, and might be passed over, were
it not for an extraordinary Lamarckian doctrine
which it contains. "Not a single domestic
animal can be named which has not in some
country drooping ears; and the view suggested
by some authors, that the drooping is due to
disuse of the muscles of the ear, from the animals
not being much alarmed by danger, seems probable."
Now, of all animals in the world, I should think
our domestic ox, horse, ass, or mule, are, on the
whole the least alarmed by danger. Why have
they not drooping ears? Or if Mr. D. considers
the motion which the ears of these animals pos-
sess, and which is useful for many purposes, as
drooping, then the most timid of our wild quad-
rupeds, the hare, must be said to have a drooping
ear also!

The next cause of variation treated of by Mr.
Darwin is correlation of growth, instancing the
following examples: — 1. — Breeders believe that
long limbs are almost always accompanied by
an elongated head. 2. — Cats with blue eyes are
invariably deaf. 3. — White sheep and pigs are
differently affected from coloured individuals by
certain vegetable poisons. 4. — Hairless dogs
have imperfect teeth. 5. — Long-haired and coarse-
haired animals are apt to have, as is asserted,
long or many horns. 6. — Pigeons with feathered
feet have skin between the toes. 7. — Pigeons

28 SPECIES NOT

with short feet have long beaks, and vice versa.
And these are the peculiarities which man selects
or avoids to cause variation in his domestic
species; for, according to Mr. Darwin's theory
of correlation, if we select any peculiarity in
an animal, we unconsciously modify other parts
of structure!

Now, as these preliminary parts of Mr. Darwin's
work are all links in the hypothetical chain
which he has worked, it may be necessary to
notice some of these so-called correlations of
growth.

This reciprocal relation of parts in the growth
of an animal is, after all, nothing more than
the law of symmetry, which is a pervading
feature throughout nature. That a horse or a
bullock with long legs should also have a long
head, is in perfect keeping with such law. A
long-legged horse with a short head, or a short
one with a long one would not be symmetrical,
therefore abnormal. So a cat is born deaf; and
with this defect in one organ of sense, is a
peculiar colour in {mother. Mr. Darwin says
this is invariable in the cat. But he does not
mean to assert (because he is a man of emi-
nence, and would not, I am sure, descend to
sophistry so unworthy,) that because the iris of
the cat is blue, therefore the cat is deaf! No,
he merely asserts a coincidence; but I may
take the liberty of remarking that this should
not have been mentioned as an instance of
correlation of growth. If it means anything, it

TRANSMUTABLE. 29

is simply that a deaf cat with blue eyes has
transmitted its auditory defect and visual pe-
culiarity to its successors. But it would be the
height of absurdity, to suppose that by selecting
this coincident defect, a cat-fancier could produce
a correlation of other parts of structure in the
cat!

Of the facts quoted from Heusinger I know
nothing; but I will venture to wager my exis-
tence, that I will poison a black and white pig,
or a black and white sheep, with the same doses
of the same poison, whatever that may be.
Hairs, teeth, horns, feathers, and skins, being all
merely modifications of the same epidermic fibre,
there is nothing at all wonderful in the fact,
that there should be a reciprocal relation between
their growth and development. But if Mr.
Darwin means to assert, that by taking animals
having any peculiarity of growth in the epider-
mic fibrous element, he can induce a modification
in the growth of any other distinct element, or,
if in other words, he says he can affect the
normal growth of nerve, bone, blood; or that
he can produce, by crossing, a correlation of
growth between structures anatomically or his-
tologically different, I tell him he asserts that
which is disproved by every known fact in
science.

So much for correlation. Mr. Darwin's next
cause of variation is inheritance. This is the
very basis of his doctrine, and singularly enough
he writes himself, unconsciously, a condemnation

30 SPECIES NOT

of his own theory! He first dismisses from his
category, as not serving his purpose, all variation
which is not inherited. It is important to bear
this in mind, because it is an admission that the
"law" of variation is largely exceptional, which,
at all events, takes it at once out of the list of
natural or biological laws, which are uniform and
constant.

Then Mr. Darwin asserts that ulike produces
like," which is quite true, and sums up by
stating that the "inheritance of every character
is the rule, and non-inheritance is the anomaly."
A sounder or truer passage was never penned.
Inheritance is the great Divine law by which
species have been preserved pure; non-inheritance
of a perfect form is the source of an anomaly of
variation. Such is my reading of this passage.
Can it be otherwise? If answered negatively,
then we must admit that no race, or species, or
form of any kind was ever perfect or pure, or
that the inheritance of variation is a constant
law; that of purity the anomaly and exception!

Oh, but says Mr. Darwin, I mean nothing of
the kind, "I do not consider the law of variation
constant, but I do believe the law of inheritance
constant. Take one hundred individuals, and
suppose one of them exhibits a variation. This
variation is inherited by the succeeding progeny,
modified of course by its union with a pure in-
dividual; and the modified progeny will go on,
shall I say for ever, producing beings like them-
selves? No, I don't say for ever; for after a

TRANSMUTABLE. 31

thousand generations another variety will occur,
which will produce varieties like itself for another
thousand generations, and so on until the variation
has so far receded from the original form, that
instead of being an oyster it has become a fish;
after numberless generations the fish becomes a ser-
pent— the reptile, in the course of time, changes
into a bird — and then the bird into a mammal: all
its adaptations for living in certain media, its
mode of development, and its instincts being
changed at the same time that the physical
structure is changed. This is my belief."

But whence, I ask with all deference, did our
mammal, which we have just formed, arise?
Why, from Mr. Darwin's anomaly, out of one
hundred species! What became of the ninety-
nine? They, of course, were pure species! They
went on developing according to a natural law
which would perpetuate them for ever.

"Stop," again exclaims Mr. Darwin, uwhy will
you continue to misrepresent me. In the course
of time there would be other varieties arise.
The descendants of the ninety-nine would produce
other anomalies, and they would go on multiplying
and increasing, and becoming altered in structure,
and gaining new parts, and becoming new forms."

Very well, but what becomes now of your law
of inheritance; you are ignoring the rule alto-
gether, and throwing all the work upon the
exception, or, as you call it, anomaly! And
such is the conclusion to which Mr. Darwin's
reasoning inevitably tends. If we take the other

32 SPECIES NOT

side of the question, and assume that the ninety-
nine were not pure forms, but those that had been
subject to variation were, then the law becomes
at once a constant, not an intermittent quantity;
and no one, I presume, will contend that there
is a natural law of variation acting uniformly
and constantly in living organisms! Of course
such a law, did it exist, would destroy all per-
manence and stability in species, and the various
forms of life would be merely transitional, and
constantly passing from — I was going to say
one form to another; but this would be absolute
nonsense, for without permanence and speciality
there could be no typical being to classify, and
the whole race of living things — plants and
animals, would be merely the various expressions
of the phases of the same thing.

But Mr. Darwin does not claim a general and
constant law of variation. He attempts to arrive
at the same conclusions to which such a law
must evidently lead us, by other means. Accord-
ing to his theory, a variation takes place some
time in the history of the creature. This variation
leads step by step to altered form, structure,
and habit; but he does not say this results
from an inherent principle in the animal or
plant alone. The external agencies are what
he terms the ''struggle for existence," giving to
such a varied form a condition superior to others
of its class, and therefore ultimately causing
their extinction and its permanent position in
the scale. In addition to this struggle he creates

TUANSMUTABLE. W

another power or force, which he calls "natural
selection," which is nothing more or less, in plain
language, than transferring to nature the functions
of the pigeon-fancier. But then he is obliged to
add to the natural selection force such aids as
"use and disuse," "acclimatisation," "correlation
of growth," "compensation and economy of growth,"
and the sum total of these forces he terms "The
Law of variation."

And through the medium of these laws he
not only changes species, but genera, families,
and classes! Converts the fish into a bird, the
cold-blooded reptile into a mammal. By these
means he alters not only the form, colour, arid
habits of the being, — its instincts, passions, reason,
—but even its minute structure. He changes
the huge blood disc of the siren into the small
one of the goat or the dromedary, and all those
intermediate, with the capacity of the capillaries
through which they move! The form of the
fish's eye, which is adapted to allow for the
refraction of light, is only a modification of that
by which the eagle sees its prey in its lofty
flight; its gills, adapted to receive a supply of
air in water, but an altered phase in that which
breathes in the atmosphere; its egg and devel-
opment a "variation" of the same organisms which
have produced the uterine mammal. It is per-
fectly useless in such a system to look for design.
Such a thing could only exist by special crea-
tion, and this Mr. Darwin ignores with a vehemency
which is quite appalling.

34 SPECIES NOT

Why talk of our god-like reason and the per-
fection of our senses, and their adaptation to
the world around us? Mr. Darwin will tell you
they are but degrees in animal development, —
they are the results of his law of variation, —
of his struggle for existence and natural selec-
tion,— marks only of progress in the great law
of change which he says has existed in the
physical world for a period too great for the
mind to grasp, and from which he assumes that
"no cataclysm has desolated the whole world,
and that we may look with some confidence to
a secure future of equally inappreciable length,"
in which, "judging from the past we may infer
safely that not one living species will transmit
its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity." —
(Page 489.)

Now if the last passage is true, Mr. Darwin's
law must be a constant and universal one, which
we have just seen is a profoundly absurd sup-
position, and distinctly over and over again
denied by Mr. Darwin. How strange, if there
is a vestige of truth in this remarkable theory,
that we should never either in past or present
time have seen a transitional species. Immense
time is one of the pillars of Mr. Darwin's doctrine.
Variation also being gradual, the changes must
occur in successive periods, and it passes all
belief that neither during the historic period, or
lapse of time since the Silurian epoch, the verv
thought of which takes away one's breath, no
single solitary instance of the transmutation of

TRANSMUTABLE. 35

species, or the preparatory changes necessary to
such alteration should have been discovered ! It
is impossible to conceive that if such a change
took place that it would not be going on, how-
ever slowly, daily before our eyes. For, assuming
the origin of species from a single form, the
divergence and splitting up must have been so
enormous, that it would be inconceivable that
none of the lines should have fallen upon the
present race of mankind, or that, like other
known laws in nature, this one of variation or
transmutation should not have become manifest!
As an instance of the non- variability of animal
life I may mention here that Agassiz, in his
admirable work upon classification, states that
he has convinced himself by repeated and careful
examination, that the coral reefs of Florida have
taken at least two hundred thousand years to
form by Polyps, the descendants of which are
now living unaltered, and working away as fast
as ever. — (Page 80.)

The rest of Mr. Darwin's first chapter is
occupied in speculations about the origin of
domestic species from one or several wild ones,
the latter of which opinion he holds as to dogs
and fancy pigeons. He gives no opinion about
sheep or goats, but thinks with Mr. Blyth that
the Indian humped cattle descended from a
different stock from our European cattle. Horses
Mr. D. thinks descended from one wild stock.
Poultry not; Mr. Blyth believes they arose from
the wild Indian fowl, (Gallus bunkiva.) Ducks

36 SPECIES NOT

and rabbits from the common wild duck mid rab-
bit. He finishes by a dozen pages upon "selection
by man," and sums up by expressing his belief
"that the conditions of life, from their action on
the reproductive system, are so far of the highest
importance as causing variability. "/ do not
believe that variability is an inherent <m<l
necessary contingency under all circumstances,
with all organic beings, as some authors hurt'
thought. Variability is governed by in any un-
known laws, more especially that of correlation
of growth, — the effects are modified by inheri-
tance and reversion, — something is attributed
to the direct actions of life, — something to use
and disuse." And then Mr. Darwin expresses
the easily-imagined result as being "thus rendered
infinitely complex." Crossing, however, has had
something to do with it, but "over all these
causes of change I am convinced that the accu-
mulative action of selection, whether applied
methodically and more quickly, or unconsciously
and more slowly but more efficiently, is by far
the predominant power." — (Page 43.)

So here we have this unknown power of
"natural selection" acting upon an uncertain
variability, which is governed by "unknown laws,"
distinctly Compared with that selection which is
applied "methodically" by man, operating in the
former case "unconsciously" but "more slowly and
efficiently."

TRANSMUTABLE. 37

CHAPTER III.

Variation under Nature is the subject of Mr.
Darwin's second chapter. He commences by
stating that he reserves for his future work the
numerous facts by which he can prove that
species vary in a state of nature. It is in these
first lines of Mr. Darwin's work that we shall
find the elements of his theory. For instance,
"Do species vary in a state of nature?" The
answer which all naturalists will give to this
question is in the affirmative; but they by no
means mean this in the sense entertained by
Mr. Darwin. His answer, reduced to its literal
signification is; that variation means an organic
change in the fabric of the organism, which has
the principle within it of still further change,
by successive development through great periods
of time, until the animal or plant becomes
transformed into an organism totally different
from its original form, — a wheat plant into an
oak tree, or a fish into a human being.

Now I rejoin to this, that although we have
abundance of evidence of variation in species,
we have not the slightest atom of proof, or
even the shadow of probability, either in com-
parative anatomy, or the records of geology, or
in anything that is known in the laws of life
and development, to prove that species are

38 SPECIES NOT

transrau table in the sense used by Mr. Darwin.
On the contrary, we have evidence so strong and
overwhelming on the other side of the question,
that it is perfectly astonishing how any person,
much less a distinguished naturalist, could have
arrived at the same conclusion as he has done.
"In a word," writes an elegant American
author, Dr. Brackenridge Clemens, "regeneration
is a manifestation of continuous growth in
species in their respective cycles of organic
evolution around which the structural processes
revolve, and repeat themselves, continuously and
precisely what hud been accomplished by pre-
existing representative bodies, without power to
exceed or restrict a designated and pre-ordained
orbit. And for each there is a persisting life,
never intermitted for an instant of time, running
through a chain of representative bodies, and
reaching from the first created conception, not
only to the present time, but into that future
when organic existence shall have terminated.
This produces, and must continue to produce,
successive representatives, which harmonize and
agree with the original and inceptive organism,
and are not only similar to it, but identical
amongst themselves. The mind can detect no
essential difference on which to establish dis-
tinctions, and we recognise them as the same
beings, the same conception, whatever may be
their geographical origin; all structural differences
have disappeared, and investigation proves that
each individual repeats and reiterates one and

TRANSMUTABLE. 39

the same biography, with all its distinctive pe-
culiarities.' ' — (Reprinted from the Journal of the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, in
Stainton's Entomological Annual for 1860.

And what says Professor Owen, a man whose
authority, I presume, no one will doubt: — uNo
species of animal has been subject to such decisive
experiments, continued through so many genera-
tions, as to the influence of different degrees of
exercise of the muscular system, difference in
regard to food, association with man, and the
concomitant stimulus to the development of in-
telligence, as the dog; and no domestic animal
manifests so great a range of variety, in regard,
to general size, to the colour and character of
the hair, and to the form of the head, as it is
affected by different proportions of the cranium
and face, and by the intermuscular crests super-
added to the cranial parieties. Yet under the
extremest mark of variety so superinduced, the
naturalist detects in the dental formula, and in
the construction of the cranium, the unmistakable
generic and specific characters of the Canis
familiaris" — (On the Classification and Distri-
bution of the Mammalia, 1859.)

What says Mr. Woollaston, who is so often
([noted by Mr. Darwin, and who is undoubtedly
one of our best writers on the variation of
species: — uHowever difficult it may be in some
instances to distinguish aright between species
and varieties as rigidly defined, there is an instinct
within us which often recognises the latter, even

40 SPECIES NOT

at iirst sight as unmistakably such." — (On the
Variation of Species, page 8.)

Again, "Whilst exploring the larren moor or
bleak upland heights, the botanist would as
assuredly look for a change in the outward
configuration of certain species which coloni/e
equally the rich meadows and teeming ravines,
as a geographical difference is a priori antici-
pated between the hard sturdy mountaineer and
the more enervated denizen of the plain. A
daisy gathered on the cultivated lawn has usually
attained a greater degree of perfection and
luxuriance than its companion from the sterile
heath; and the bramble which chokes up the
ditches of the sheltered hedge-row, wears a very
different ^aspect from its stunted brother of the
hills."— (Op. Cit, page 9.)

One more extract from Mr. Woollaston's valuable
work:— "Still less would I willingly lend a
helping hand to that most mischievous of AogrMtB,
that they (local influences) are all important in
their operation, — or, in other words, that they
possess within themselves the inherent power
(though it may not be invariably exercised) of
shaping out (provided a sufficient time be granted
them, and in conjunction with the advancing
requirements of the creatures themselves) those
permanent organic states to which the name of
speciea (in a true sense) is now applied. Such
a doctrine is in reality nothing more than the
t r< i u sanitation theory in all its unvarnished ful-
ness; and I do not see how it can be for a

TRANSMUTABLE. 41

moment maintained, so long as facts (and not
reasoning only) are to be the basis of our specu-
lations." "It does indeed appear strange that

naturalists who have combined great synthetic
qualities with a profound knowledge of minutiae
and detail, should ever have upheld so monstrous
a doctrine as that of the transmutation of one
species into another — a doctrine, however, which
arises almost spontaneously, if we are to assume
that there exists in every race the tendency to
an unlimited progressive improvement. There
are certainly no observations on record which
would in the smallest degree countenance such

an hypothesis." "It is moreover a singular

phenomenon, and one in which the strongest
proofs of design (or a primary adjustment of
limits with a view to the future)- may be
discerned, that the members of the organic
creation, which display the greatest adnptive
power, are those which were apparently destined

to become peculiarly attendant upon man."

"The whole theory is full of inconsistencies,
from beginning to end; arid from whatever point
we view it, it is equally unsound." — (Op. Cit,
pages 186-8.)

Such were the recorded opinions of Mr.
Woollaston in 1856, and to whom does the
reader suppose his work is dedicated? To no
one else but Mr. Darwin ! Alas for human
nature! Could Mr. Woollaston, when he penned
the above sound and excellent remarks, have
dreamt that the man to whom he dedicated his

42 SPECIES NOT

book, should in I860 have written a work as-
cribing all living things to a common progenitor,
and arguing that all animals and plants are but
transmuted individuals, possessing within them-
selves athe inherent power (variation) of shaping
out (natural selection) those permanent states to
which the name of species is now applied."

But the most singular circumstance connected
with these sound and well-expressed opinions of
Mr. Woollaston three years ago, is that Mr.
Darwin not only frequently quotes facts from
Mr. W.'s researches in Madeira, in support of
his hypothesis, but he actually relies upon some
of them as the very basis of his theory ! Surely
Mr. Woollaston has not become a convert to
Mr. Darwin's views. If so, what value can be
attached to the reasonings of scientific men, or
the strong "dogmatic decision" with which they
draw conclusions from facts.

I will yet quote another authority — that of
one of the greatest and most profound naturalists
of this or any other age, Louis Agassiz. "It
was a great step in the progress of science when
it was ascertained that species have fixed char-
acters, and that they do not change in the
course of time. Hut this fact, for which we
are indebted to Cuvier, has acquired a still
greater importance since it has been established
that even the most extraordinary changes in the
mode of existence, and in the conditions under
which animals are placed, have no more influence
upon their essential characters than the lapse

TRANSMUTABLE. 43

of time." — (Essay on Classification, page 76.)

"Between two successive geological periods
then changes have taken place between animals
and plants. But none of those primordial forms
of life which naturalists call species, are known
to have changed during any of these periods.7'
— (Op. Cit, page 76.) "And nothing furnishes
the slightest argument in favour of their (species)
mutability. On the contrary every modern in-
vestigation has gone only to confirm the result
first obtained by Cuvier, and his views that
species are fixed." — (Page 78.) "There is no
more reason to suppose species equally allied,
following one another in time to be derived one
from the other; and all that has been said in
preceding paragraphs respecting the differences
observed between species occurring in different
geological areas, applies with the same force to
species succeeding each other in the course of
time. When domesticated animals and cultivated
plants are mentioned as furnishing evidences of
the mutability of species, the circumstance is
constantly overlooked or passed over in silence,
that the first point to be established respecting
them, in order to justify any inference from
them against the fixity of species, would be to
shew that each of them has originated from one
common stock, which, far from being the case,
is flatly contradicted by the positive knowledge
we have that the varieties of several of them at
least are owing to the entire amalgamation of
different species." — (Pages 81-82.)

44 IKS NOT

Talking of domesticated animals and plants
he observes,— "they must be well distinguished
from permanent races, which, for aught we
know, may be primordial, for breeds are the
result of the fostering care of man; they are
the product of the limited influence and control
the human mind has over organized beings, and
not the free product of mere physical agents.
They shew, therefore, that even the least im-
portant changes, which may take place during
one and the same cosmic period among animals
and plants, are controlled by an intellcctwd
power, and do not result from the immediate
action of physical causes." •-( Page 82.)

"Modern science, however, can shew in tJn>
most satisfactory manner, that all finite beings
have made their appearance successively and at
long intervals, and that each kind of organized
beings has existed for a definite period of time,
in past ages, and that those now living are of
comparatively recent origin. At the same time
the order of their succession and their immuta-
bility, during such cosmic periods, shew no
casual connexion with physical agents, and the
known sphere of action of those agents in nature,
but argue in favour of repeated intervention-
on the part of the Creator." — (Page 84.)

Now these are the deliberately-expressed opin-
ions of men who have devoted their lives to
the study of these questions. No one will, 1
think, be bold enough to say the conclusions
arrived at by such men as Owen or Agassiz

TRANSMIT! ABLE. 45

are to be treated with indifference. For the
grounds upon which these opinions are formed,
I must refer to the several works upon com-
parative anatomy and zoology which they have
written.

Mr. Darwin next attempts -to give a definition
of "a species." This is one eminently calculated
to fall in with his theory. "A species," says
Mr. Darwin "includes the unknown element of a
distinct act of creation," and as he intends to
prove that all living things have arisen from
one form; and as he particularly and most
strongly combats the idea of the varieties of
animals and plants being the result of special
acts of creation, it is clear that in his opinion
there never could have been but one species, and
that was the original "unknown element of a
distinct act of creation."

I will here again quote the elegant remarks of
Dr. Clemens, (Op. Cit,) as I think it would be
impossible to define correct notions about "species"
better; and I shall, in criticising Mr. Darwin's
views, always prefer to answer them in the words
of men of much higher authority than myself: —

"In endeavouring to form a conception of what
constitutes species, our ideas must be separated
from the individual, which is merely the repre-
sentative of species in some one of its special
states or conditions. Every mature or perfected
being has had an anterior organic history included
in the history of its structural progression, from
a collection of simple cells to a natural body

46 SPECIES NOT

possessing individual and distinctive characteristics.
No one of its states or conditions constitutes
species; neither the perfect insect nor the pupa,
nor the larva, nor the ovum, fulfil in themselves
the conception involved in this term, but simply
represent the various relations the individual main-
tains to physical and animated nature, and during
the continuance of which its structural and pe-
culiar biography is written.

The perfect being is the temporary expression
of a thought, or conception involved in the series
of actions which constitute in their entity a special
and definite creation, and in this state has reached
the acme of its perfectibility, a point beyond which
it cannot pass; but after a variable period its
organic part is broken up, and resolved again
into the simple or primary elements of matter.
The species, or the thought however does not
cease to exist during the process of organic dis-
integration of the individual, and previously to
its disappearance or death, it represents its special
organism, or rather its species, by means of an
ovum, in which the organic actions destroyed in
the previous representative, are recommenced, and
again carried through a series of changes or states
to the point of its previous organic perfection ;
commencing in the simplest organic state, and
continually returning to renew a series of pre-
determined special 9 developments. We have in
species a cycle of persistent ceaseless actions, re-
volving in their narrow orbit, with all f/te indica-
of dcri-ijn, and with comparatively as much

TRANSMUTABLE. 47

invariability as the great planets observe in their
appointed paths."

And to continue the chain of this beautiful
reasoning, let us hear what the same writer says
of a variety as distinct from species. —

"For wherein does a variety differ from species?
Is it by any difference in the ovum, any peculi-
arity in the form, structure, ornamentation, or
biography of the embryo, any difference in pu-
pation, or any essential or specific variation in
the structure of the perfect insect? By 110 means.
To be a variety or wandering from a certain
specific type, it must observe the same biographical
and organic cycle, possess the same specific cha-
racteristics of structure in its perfect state, but
differ from the species in its peculiarities of or-
namentation, and in its size perhaps, to a degree
that without a knowledge of its embryology and
biography it would be pronounced and registered
distinct from the perfect individuals, towards which
it shews the strongest specific affinities of struc-
ture.

Variation or specific instability observes fixed
and determined limits, which must be ascertained
by observation in part of the true history of
species. It is not manifested to the same degree,
probably in the specific character of every true
species, but wheresoever and whensoever it does
occur is capable of being referred to its normal
type by its agreement in all those essential
characteristics necessary to form a conception of
a true species. As long as the diagnosis must

48 SPECIES NOT

be confined to a description of the ornamentation
of the perfect being, there are no means of dis-
tinguishing certainly the variety from species,
should the former differ from the latter essentially
in this respect; and I have no doubt that every
effort at systematization with a knowledge of
perfect forms alone, contains many illustrations
of the attendant difficulties of discrimination."

Mr. Woolluston considers species "to involve
that ideal relationship amongst all its members,
which the descent from a common parent can
alone convey;" while varieties, he thinks, "should
be restricted, unless I am mistaken, to those
various aberrations from their peculiar type,
which are sufficiently constant and isolated in
their general character, to appear to be at first
sight distinct from it." — (Op. Cit, page 4.)

With the above opinions Mr. Woollaston "as-
sumes" as true, that there have been "specific
centres of creation;" a doctrine which is supported
by evidence of the highest kind, brought forward
by the late lamented Edward Forbes.

"Any two races of animals," says Dr. Carpenter,
"are considered to be of distinct species, which
are marked by characters of difference that are
constantly exhibited; so that neither shews any
tendency to lose its own peculiarity, or to ac-
quire that of the other. Thus, notwithstanding
the variety of form exhibited by the several
races of dog, we never see any which present
so strong a resemblance to a fox as to be at
all in danger of being mistaken for that animal ;

TRANSMUTABLE. 49

and they may always be distinguished by this
obvious character — that the pupil of the eye of
the dog is always round, whilst that of the fox
is oval when contracted." — (Animal Physiology,
§ 533.)

Mr. Darwin alludes to "monsters," arid to the
number of cases he could adduce, in which parts
of importance, physiologically, vary in individuals
of the same species. But what are these cases
in comparison to the vast bulk of normal forms?
And again, are not these deviations in almost
every case degradations from the natural standard
of structure? And are they not frequently pro-
duced by an altered or an unnatural mode of
life? You take the larva of a caterpillar from
its tree out of doors, and you feed it in con-
finement, and then are astonished to find some
deviation from its normal character.

It appears to me that the introduction of these
accidental or induced abnormities of form, as an
illustration of even a tendency towards the
transmutation of species, is feeble in the extreme.
The proof we want, is not that structure will
vary, or that even induced peculiarities are in-
herited, but that such change or inheritance is
a natural law by which one species is ultimately
changed into another. I repeat, that in Mr.
Darwin's book we have not the shadow of a
proof of this.

"But," said an intelligent man to me in the
course of conversation, "you do not mean to say
that Mr. Darwin argues that a zoophyte is de-

50 SPECIES NOT

veloped into an oyster, the ojster into a crab,
the crab into a fish, the fish into a reptile, the
reptile into a bird, and the bird into a mammal?
I look upon his views in a different light. I
regard his theory to mean that starting from any
one point his forms, are an infinity of divergences
ultimately terminated in species as we see them ;
the lives being long or short according to the po-
sition of the organisms in the scale, and that he
does not inculcate the necessity of passing through
the phases you have just quoted."

To the naturalist of course I need not reply
to this observation. If Mr. Darwin's theory
means anything, it means progressive development.
He expressly states that each sta«re of variation
must be for the benefit of the individual, which
benefit in the "struggle for existence" he turns
to his own account. But if Mr. Darwin does
not mean that his species have passed through
the phases of existence as exemplified by modern
classifiers, his theory becomes infinitely more im-
probable, because the difference between interme-
diate forms must have been much greater, and
the chances of their being formed by "natural
selection" still greater also. Thus, what corres-
ponds to the heart of higher animals, in the
insect is a mere dilated tube; this in the fish
is differentiated into a heart with an auricle
and ventricle; in the reptile there are three
Cavities, in the bird and mammal four. Now as
each of these hearts are peculiarly adapted to
the condition of life of the individual species, Mr.

TRANSMUTABLE. 51

Darwin's variations must have either taken this
course, or he must have disproved the maxim he
is so anxious to support. "Natura non facit
sal turn."

But Mr. Darwin is himself very explicit upon
the subject. ulf it could be demonstrated that
any complex organ existed which could next pos-
sibly have been formed by numerous successive
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down."— (Page 189, Chapter YL)

But then seeing the difficulty, he argues it
thus, — "If we look to an organ common to all
the members of a large class, in this case the
organ must have been first formed at an ex-
tremely remote period, since which all the mem-
bers of the class have been developed; and in
order to discover the early transitional grades
through which the organ has passed, we should
have to look to very ancient ancestral forms,
long since extinct." — (Pages 189-90.)

And then he goes at once into what he calls
the proof of transition in organs, by adducing
the homology of the swim bladder in fishes and
lung of mammal; and because some fishes aerate
part of the blood in the swim bladder as well
as the lung, Mr. D. considers he has adduced an
instance of how the minor organism may be
transmuted into the major, or, in his own words,
uthere seems to me to be no great difficulty in
believing that natural selection has actually
converted the swim bladder into a lung, or organ
used exclusively for respiration." — (Page 191.)

52 SPECIES NOT

And in the next passage: — "I can hardly indeed
doubt that all vertebrate animals having true
lungs, [at the head of which is man,] have des-
cended by ordinary generation from an ancient
prototype, of which we know nothing, furnished
with a floating apparatus, or swim bladder." An
organ now at all events exclusively confined to
fishes, animals living in water.

But to prevent any doubt of Mr. Darwin's
views on this subject, I will quote one more
passage. Alluding to the doctrine uXatura non
facit saltum," he remarks: — "Why on the the-
ory of creation should this be so? Why should
all the parts and organs of many independent
beings, each supposed to have been separately
created for its proper place in nature, be so in-
variably linked together by graduated steps?
Why should not nature have taken a leap from
structure to structure? On the theory of natural
selection we can clearly understand why she
should not, for natural selection can act only
by taking advantage of slight successive varia-
tion; she can never take a leap, but must ad-
vance by the shortest and slowest steps."

The ground, then, is cleared of all doubt as
to Mr. Darwin's meaning. The fish has been
converted into the lung-breathing animal. But
we have lost the prototype, says Mr. Darwin.
How is this? He argues from an existing type,
that certain changes have taken place between
the swim bladder and the lung, ending in the
conversion of the one into the other. But why

TRANSMUTABLE. 53

does he reject the existing form, from which
his inference is drawn? Why first infer the
wildest improbability, arid then extend the range
of his speculation into the dark unknown, un-
fathomable myth of a pre-silurian world.

Are we prepared to give up all our cherished
notions, and belief in the adaptation of structure
to the circumstances of existence. Our appre-
ciation of design, as the mark which the
Creator has imprinted on the created, — to a
wild speculation without even the support of
the ordinary basis upon which reason argues
out its facts?

We see a race of human beings living in
every part of the known world, gifted with the
highest mental faculties, and endowed with the
loftiest notions of religion. We see animals of
unnumbered forms roaming through the wild
and uncivilized tracts of the world. The sea
has its myriads, adapted to a special existence.
The birds of the air, in varied plumage

"Bear on their wings and in their notes His praise."

Descending lower in the scale of creation, we
see numberless forms of exquisite structure, all
in their appointed sphere. Go where we will
we find life, but always adapted to a special
end, and formed for a wise purpose. All this
we/ combine into a great scheme of creation,
ordained and perfected by Infinite Wisdom.
Adopt Mr. Darwin's theory, and what do we
see? Through the gloom of myriads of ages

54 SPECIES NOT

we behold an "unknown element of special
creation," uniting in itself the male and female
structure. This primordial form has by its
liability to vary in its progeny, become the
parent of every plant and animal in the world !
We are not told how long it remained sole
tenant of the mighty world — how long the air
and the deep waited for their creatures. We
are led to suppose that some time after it was
called into existence some one of its descendants
exhibited — by mere chance, not by natural law,
for we have seen a natural law cannot be par-
tial in its operation, — some slight variation.
This alteration was transmitted to its offspring,
and again it varied.

As it can be pretty clearly proved that man
has not varied towards a different form, at least
during the historic period, it is clear these
variations, slight as they were, must each have
taken thousands or even millions of years to
form. Never mind; land, air, and water are pa-
tient; they still wait for their living tenants. At
length our organism arrives at a point in which
a great "struggle for existence" takes place; one
class of descendants shews a decided tendency to
"vary" into plants, another has an animal
tendency. The animal being the strongest wins
the day, and henceforth tafces the lead, and we
have perfected the first animal form ! Happy
in its defeat, the unconscious plant takes root
in the earth, and we have the first vegetable
structure. Of course these forms must be her-

TRANSMUTABLE. 55

maplirodite. For countless ages they eacli go on
increasing. Natural law plays her part well at
first, and predominates; at length each form
varies. The variation becomes permanent, and
is transmitted from race to race. Gradually
one variation takes one form, another assumes
a different one. The "struggle for existence"
in a world designed to be peopled, goes on.
Myriads of ages pass. Continents are destroyed
arid buried beneath the deep, carrying with
them every transitional form by which posterity
could recognise the power of "natural selection."
The dawn of that geological epoch, which we
now call the first that came into existence, is
attained. But all that has been arrived at by
the "laws of variation" are structures similar
to those of our coral or sea-weed, oyster,
nautilus, or woodlouse. These, then, must have
been the progenitors of the present race of man,
and every animal on the face of the earth !

And now we come to a period in the world's
history, according to the Darwinian theory, which
can be measured by our knowledge. For hun-
dreds of thousands of millions of years since
the siluriari epoch there are geological evidences
of the life that has been in the world. And
what do we see? In that vast period of time
we never discern a form which is transitional
from one kind of animal or plant to another of
a different class! But these forms must have
been at work; a variation occurring here pro-
duces a fish, there a lobster; now we see a

56 SPECIES NOT

reptile changed into a bird, because some for-
tuitous variation gave it the mastery in the
struggle for existence. But look farther on,
credulous mortal, the oviparous bird has to be
changed, — into what? Why, into the mammal,
with its uterine gestation, and its human form
at the top of the list. One now feels a strange
interest in the matter, — birds, reptiles, fish,
lobsters, insects, worms, zoophytes, protozoons,
plants, all shade into insignificance before the
phase in the scene now opening out. The bird
has at length been converted into the duck-
billed platypus, or the porcupine ant-eater! Hail,
profound progenitor of mankind; henceforth you
must take your proper rank among the very
highest of the mammal race, .for your blood is
our blood, and your bone our bone.

But unnumbered ages have passed away, for
all links of the next stage are lost; the "possum
up a gum-tree," the "bandicoot rats," the "flying
phalangers," the kangaroo, and wombat next
appear on the stage of existence. All these
being what are termed "non-placental" or "ovo-
viviparous," are the lowest group of mammals,
—the line along which the "laws of variation,"
"natural selection," "divergence of form," etc.,
must have acted. We then make a great leap^
to the viviparous mammal — the "dugong," the
"dolphin," and the "whale," all of which, because
it has suited the Almighty to adapt the mode
of propagation to the circumstances under which
they live, naturalists have placed higher in the

TRAXSMUTABLE. 57

scale than the agile and graceful kangaroo ! Surely
natural selection must here have made a grand
blunder. If this is so, how much greater is
the bungle in the next leap. We have to jump
from the whale to the pig, thence to the tapir,
the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the elephant.
One certainly feels rather comforted as the
subject grows warmer, to find swine so low
down in the scale. We next jump to the
horse, zebra, quagga, and ass. And here again
we are thankful that a very vast number
of ages must have passed since humanity was
represented by a jackass. Then come the
ruminants, camel, stag, the giraffe, the graceful
antelope, the sheep, the goat, the buffalo, the
bison, and the ox.

Now we rise wonderfully in the scale. We
actually get a variation from the ox into the
sloth! the armadilla! the ant-eater! But we
will get on. What next? — Hares and rabbits
for ever! Happy should we have been had the
Darwinian theory stopped here, for then neither
a dog to worry us or a man to shoot us could
have been developed by "natural selection."
The world would have been one, it is true, of
porcupines and moles, of beavers, rats, and mice,
and squirrels. Development now makes a great
leap. It actually jumps from the squirrel to the
walrus and seal, for both of these are considered
by naturalists to be more highly organized than
any I have mentioned. With what affection Mr.
Darwin's disciples must look upon Sir Leopold

58 SPECIES NOT

Clintock's happy family party!

On we go. "Natural selection" is in full
swing. Cats, and leopards, and tigers, and lynxes,
were our next phases; wolves, and doggies, and
hyaenas our next. We then rose up to the rank
of weasel, and rested for a time as bears, badgers,
racoons, and gluttons!

But the subject now warms upon us, hedgehogs,
and shrews, and moles form the next group in
the upward road of development, and at length
we rested proudly triumphant at the last stage
but two. We now became vampires and bats!

Progress for ever! the way from the bat to
the lemur is very short, and Mr. Darwin has
shewn us how it is to be done. The "Aye, Aye"
takes us from the true lemurs to the dear inur-
mozet, thence to the American monkey, and now
we reach our penultimate phase, we become baboons
— monkeys proper, and ultimately anthropoid apes!

And here let us take breath for a moment.
I have in the above sketch passed through the
fourteen orders into which naturalists have divided
the class Mammalia, and eacli animal has been
mentioned according to the position which it holds
in the scale from structure. I am not myself
responsible for this classification. I only say it
is one which is held by the best comparative
anatomists of the present day, and being funned
according to organization, it is the order in which
the group must have been developed, if the pro-
gressive development theory be true.

Owen has founded a classification of the main-

TRANSMUTABLE. 59

malia upon a different basis to that of Cuvier,
De Blainville, and others, which I have followed.
Founding his classification upon the development
of the brain, the animals will rise in the scale
as follows, and the reader may adopt this with
perhaps greater exactitude than the other: — The
"duck mole" is at the bottom, we then go to
echidna, opossum, phalanger, kangaroo, wombat,
rat, hare, shrew, hedgehog, mole, bat, roussette,
(fruit-eating bat,) ant-eater, armadillo, sloth,
whale, porpoise, dugong, sea-cow, elephant, tapir,
horse, sheep, hog, seal, bear, dog, lemur, marmozet,
ape, — man.

Mr. Darwin says natural selection only acts
by giving to the animal some improvement by
which it can benefit itself in the "struggle for
existence," but "Natura non facit saltum." If
the opinion of naturalists is right as to the po-
sition the animals I have mentioned hold in the
scale, then it clearly must indicate the line through
which Mr. Darwin's principle has worked, and
as he distinctly says that he believes, (though
he infers more,) that each class has been formed
from one prototype, then he must believe that
the class Vertebrata, including the four sub-classes
fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, have been
derived from one form, and the line must, ac-
cording to the argument I have brought forward,
and Mr. D.'s own doctrine of "Natura non facit
saltum" have passed, though with many millions
of lost links, through the series of typical mam-
mals I have mentioned.

60 SPECIES NOT

Well, having arrived at the anthropoid ape, the
Gorilla for instance, the passage is inevitable.
There is no mincing the matter, — the next step
is that of man himself.

But where, I ask, and one feels now growing
serious, where, I ask Mr. Darwin, are your inter-
mediate forms? I tell you in the face of the
whole world of men who call themselves scientific,
that the deduction is the wildest, most absurd
and visionary, and unwarranted assumption. Take,
if you will, the degraded Bushman and the highest
ape, and I say that although so similar in many
parts of form, the difference is immense in ana-
tomical structure; and if this is so between man
and the ape, a fortiori it is so between man
and every other affinity in the living world. And
is this the result of the study of natural science
in the nineteenth century? This the result of
your forced analogies and homologies! Better
ten thousand times that Science, with every Pro-
fessor it ever had, were at the bottom of the
sea, than that it should have culminated in such
absurdity.

But Science is still and icVl be vindicated.
There is One by whom the whole world was cre-
ated,— "male and female created He them," — and
there are hundreds and thousands of men learned
in science who will raise their voices against a
doctrine which, originating in the wildest impro-
bability, is supported by no proof, and leads
inevitably, whichever way you tread, to the most
ridiculous and absurd conclusions. No! there is

TRANSMUTABLE. 61

a God who made the world in which we live,
and adapted every living thing in that scheme
of creation to the circumstances under which it
exists. Every animal is formed by intelligent
thought for its position, and specially organized
for the mode in which He willed it to live.
The whole scheme is one of exquisite beauty,
formed upon a unity of plan and of design,
which, though we may not comprehend it, always
gives a thrill of delight to the true student of
Nature. It is admitted even by the coldest and
least imaginative bookworm that ever toiled
through a blank and hopeless existence, that
this unity of type and design does unconsciously
raise the mind from u Nature up to Nature's
God."

This feeling is one innate in the human mind,
and who shall dare to say that it is not one of
the means by which He chooses to reveal His
Omnipotence and Power. I have and shall avoid
the many arguments which the Bible might afford
me in this inquiry. I fully admit that there may
be forced interpretations of the Pentateuch. But
I will leave others to use these weapons if they
choose. I repudiate Mr. Darwin's theory, but
I will draw my arguments from Science and
Natural Keligion alone, and this simply because
Mr. Darwin has very properly, and very prudently
for himself, avoided opening the wider issue.

62 SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER IV.

THE third chapter in Mr. Darwin's book is
occupied by the consideration of "Struggle for
Existence/' with its bearing upon "natural se-
lection, which is dealt with in the fourth.

By the "struggle for existence," Mr. Darwin
considers that "any variation, however slight, and
from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any
way profitable to an individual of any species in
its infinitely complex relations to other organic
beings, and to external nature, will tend to the
preservation of that individual, and will generally
be inherited by its offspring."

There can be no doubt about the "struggle
for existence." From man to the lowest animal
the product of life is necessary to support life.
It is a part of the great and inscrutable scheme
of nature that it should be so. A vast number
of animals subsist upon each other, while the
rest live upon plants, and we see a beautiful
gradation in the mode of preparing food for the
higher animals. Every thing necessary for man's
existence is taken out of the earth and air by
the family of grasses, but he would die if fed
upon grass alone. Therefore it is necessary there
should be intermediate forms, and the ox and
the sheep convert the grass into beef and mutton,
which is the principal part of human food. Is

TRANSMUTABLE. 63

this design as exemplified by special creation, or
is it the result of an unknown and inexplicable
law of variation?

But Mr. Darwin argues that this "struggle for
existence" is one of the chief means by which
the weakest goes to the wall, and the varied
species having by good luck obtained the develop-
ment of some organ it had not before, gains
the day — only in its turn to be driven out of
the field by some more fortunate subject of "natural
selection !"

But is this so? Let us look for a moment,
say, into a drop of water. Perhaps the first
thing I shall see there through the microscope
is a shapeless urisymmetrical mass, of a fleshy sub-
stance, having life without members to, or orifices
in its body. I see it feed. — Another (more highly
organized) form comes in contact with this lump
of flesh, and is instantly fixed there by the vital
instincts of the creature. Well, I look on with
wonder, and I see this animal called the Ameba
enclose its victim within its flesh; there is no
opening, but yet the animalcule is dining ! Gra-
dually the prey passes through the textures of
the ameba's body into its cavity, and the opening
closes up. When thoroughly digested, the remains
are seen to be transmitted outwards again in
the same way !

Now we can hardly conceive an animal form
more simple in its organization than this. Whence,
according to Mr. Darwin's doctrine, did it come?
Is it the result of one of his lines of divergence,

G4 SPECIES NOT

passing through all time, and yet escaping through
all the ''struggles for existence/' and now in this
advanced age of creation, shewing no modification
of form — no improvement by "natural selection?"
And mark, this is one of a class of creatures,
(the Protozoa,) of which a few teaspoonsful of
water would yield more in number than all the
other animals in the world! Nay, their remains
actually form the entire structure of some of our
thickest geological formations, as the chalk, and
yet we are calmly to believe that there has been
a "struggle for existence" going on from all time,
by which the stronger must obtain the mastery
over the weaker ! But the ameba and the sponge,
the rhizopod and the infusorial animalcule still
exist, and will for ever prove the permanence
and stability of species. These creatures all live
upon each other, but the lowest and the highest
forms, with their intermediate grades, still retain
their unaltered individuality.

Mr. Darwin says, and truly, that the rate of
increase of animal life is so great, even in the
slowest-breeding animals, that if there was not a
"struggle for existence," a triumph of the strong
over the weak, there would, in a few thousands
of years, be no room for them upon the earth,
in fact that the carnivora have already reached
their maximum.

"Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-
five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand
years, there would literally not be standing room
for his progeny." — (Page 64.) How does Mr.

TIIAKSMUTABLE. 65

Darwin reconcile this statement with his opinion
given towards the end of the book. That uas
all living forms of life are lineal descendants of
those which lived long before the siluriari epoch,
we may feel certain that the ordinary succession
by generation has never once been broken, and
that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Hence we may look with some confidence to a
secure future of equally inappreciable length" —
(Page 489.)

Now, according to Mr. Darwin, the reason why,
in a few thou§and years, the world will be able
to hold and support its human inhabitants, must
be that the "struggle for existence," and "natural
selection" will have so altered the ever- varying
animal form, that it will have "progressed fur-
ther towards perfection." — (Page 489.) If the
world will not hold us in a few thousand years,
and yet we are to look forward to an earthly
future as long as Mr. Darwin's pre-silurian world,
and the geological and historic period, I , see no
other way of getting out of the dilemma but by
interpreting Mr. Darwin's theory as above. But
Dr. Darwin has himself told us there will be this
change. "Judging from the past, we may safely
infer that not one living species will transmit
its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And
of the species now living, very few will trans-
mit progeny of any kind to a far distant
futurity."

Now, if we look at page 18, we shall read,
"But Mr. Homer's researches have rendered it

66 SPECIES NOT

in some degree probable that man, sufficiently
civilized to have manufactured pottery, existed
in the Valley of the Nile thirteen or fourteen
thousand years ago; and who will pretend to
say how long before these ancient periods, savages,
like those of Tierra del Fuego or Australia, who
possess a semi-domestic dog, may not have existed
in Egypt?"

Now seriously let us compare these phases of
Mr. Darwin's argument. If savages, similar to
those of Tierra del Fuego or Australia, which
are known to be human now, existed for an
indefinite period before fourteen thousand years,
how can Mr. Darwin assume, with the slightest
reason or plausibility, that in a "few thousand
v< ;irs" the human form will have become altered,
while still living on the earth? How, in fact,
does he reconcile the assumed antiquity of the
Inunan race with his theory of the increase of
population being checked by the altered form,
on its. road to perfection destroying the less
perfectly-organized being? There is some con-
solation, however, for us who may have descendants
in such a struggle, in the full belief we are
told to' entertain, "that the war of nature is
not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death
is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the
healthy, and the happy survive and multiply/7
-(Page 79.)

But with all due deference to these merciful
considerations, I should strongly advise the
hum a ri race to look out sharply for the first

TRANSMUTABLE. 67

/

evidence of change which must inevitably come
over their bodily form!

Natural selection is the subject treated of
by Mr. Darwin in Chapter IY. By this he
means the preservation, by nature, of favourable,
and the rejection of injurious variations.

Does such a thing exist? I firmly believe
not. Mr. Darwin begs the question thus : — "Can
it then be thought improbable, seeing that va-
riations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred,
that other variations useful in some way to
each being in the great and complex battle of
life, should sometimes occur in the course of
thousands of generations?"

Mr. Darwin illustrates the idea of natural
selection in many ways. He supposes a country
passing through a change of climate, and the
inhabitants immediately undergoing a change;
some would immigrate, and thus distort the
relations of the rest. Thus "natural selection"
would have a better chance of "profitable vari-
ation to work upon," and unless they are
profitable, natural selection can do nothing. This
"natural selection" is all-powerful. "It can act
on every internal organ, on every shade of con-
stitutional difference, on the whole machinery of
life."— (Page 83.)

Instances of natural selection in the preser-
vation of the being are exemplified by "leaf-
eatirig insects being green," and "bark-feeders
mottled grey," "the alpine ptarmigan being white
in winter," "the red grouse colour of heath, and

68 SPECIES NOT

the black grouse of peaty earth/' These act
as preservatives; they are exemplifications of
"natural selection." I pass over the fact that
4 'smooth-skinned fruits suffer more from beetles
than downy ones; and that purple plums are
less liable to disease than yellow ones," in order
that I may mention a modification of the utmost
importance to Mr. Darwin's theory, produced by
natural selection, namely, — that "variations which
under domestication appear at any particular
period of life, tend to re-appear in the offspring
at the same period."

Mr. Darwin hereafter founds some serious
arguments on this assumed power of natural
selection. It will also "modify the structure of
the young in relation to the parent, and of the
parent in relation to the young," but it cannot
"modify the structure of one species, without
giving it any advantage for the good of another
species."— (Pages 86-7.)

Further, "a structure used only once in an
animal's life, if of high importance to it, might
be modified to any extent by natural selection,
as the great jaws of certain insects, used only
for opening the cocoon, or the hard tip to the
beak of nestling birds, used for breaking the
egg. Thus, if nature wanted to make (for the
bird's own advantage) the beak of a full-grown
pigeon very short, the process of modification
%would be very slow, and there would be simul-
taneously the most rigorous 'selection' of the
young birds within the egg which had the

TRANSMUTABLE. 69

hardest beaks, for all with weak beaks would
inevitably perish; or more delicate and more
easily-broken shells might be selected, the thick-
ness of the shell being known to vary like every
other structure." — (Page 87.)

On what Mr. Darwin calls "sexual selection,"
in which he describes the various fights for
mastery in gaining the lady-loves of animals and
birds, I will only make one extract, which
criticises itself: — "If a man can in a short
time give elegant carriage and beauty to his
bantams, according to his standard of beauty, I
can see no good reason to doubt that female
birds, by selecting during thousands of genera-
tions the most melodious or beautiful males,
according to their standard of beauty, might
produce a marked effect!"

To illustrate these views of natural' selection
Mr. Darwin gives several imaginary cases. 1. —
If certain wolves and deer inhabited the same
country, and the country were to alter, so that
the deer increased in number, and the other
animals upon which the wolves preyed by craft
or strength, diminished; then Mr. D. can see
no reason to doubt that the swiftest wolves
would have the best chance of surviving, and
so be preserved or selected. Or, 2. — A cub
wolf might be born with an innate ^tendency to
pursue certain kinds of prey, just as 3. — Some
of Mr. St. John's cats caught mice, others rats;
one winged game, another hares and rabbits;
while a third used to hunt the marshes and

70 SPECIES NOT

catch snipes. 4. — Certain plants excrete a
nectar which is greedily sought after by insects.
Therefore these insects would carry away the
pollen to other flowers, which would transmit to
their seedlings the nectar-secreting power; and
those individuals which excreted most nectar,
would, in the long run, gain the upper hand.
If the plant were, under some new conditions,
to lose one of its organs, more or less impor-
tant, then the insect would carry away the
tendency to transmit flowers with only a pistil
or a style, and so produce dioecious plants. 5.
—Some of the nectar-feeding insects, as the
wild bee is known to do, might bore holes into
the bases of the flowers, to get the juice by a
shorter road than inserting their tongues; and
"I see no reason to doubt that an accidental
deviation in the size and form of the body, or
in the curvature and length of the proboscis,
etc., far too slight to be appreciated by us,
might profit a bee or other insect, so that an
individual so characterized would be able to
obtain its food more quickly, and so have a
better chance of living, and leaving descendants !"
—(Page 94.) 6.— The tubes of the corolla of
the common red and incarnate clover differ in
length, so that the hive bee can only get nec-
tar out of, the incarnate clover, not out of
the red, which is visited by the humble bee
alone. Thus it might be of advantage to the
hive bee to have a longer tongue; or if the
humble bee were to grow scarce, it might be

TRANSMUTABLE. 71

necessary for the red clover to have a shorter
corolla, so that the pollen might be conveyed
for the purposes of fertilization from flower to
flower, and this would be done by "natural
selection."

And, "as modern geology has almost banished
such views as the excavation of a great valley
by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selec-
tion, if it be a true principle, banish the belief
of the continued creation of new organic beings,
or of any great and sudden modification in their
structure."— (Page 96.)

Now, I think the reader will have no difficulty
in clearly understanding what Mr. Darwin means
by "natural selection." From the above extracts
it is quite unmistakable that he means, by
variation, an accidental variation in structure.
My previous arguments must, I think, have
proved this indirectly. We now have it in his
own words. If this accidental variation is of
importance to the animal, then, by mere "brute
force" it obtains the mastery over other species
not born with this abnormity, and transmits
its superiority to its descendants. The change
is assumed to have been going on for "thou-
sands of generations," until "natural selection"
separates it from its brethren, and in due
course of time produces a new species, — genus,
—family, — order, — class.

It is impossible to conceive anything more vague
or improbable than all this. What a bungle it
makes of creation. A fortunate beetle grows in

72 SPECIES NOT

colour more like the wall on which it crawls, or
the leaf on which it feeds, and this by pure
accident, and it is consequently not eaten up
by birds, (while its brethren are, and perish,)
but lives and propagates its species, which
hereafter, having a better chance in the "struggle
for existence," become the dominant members of
a new genus or order! Thus an exquisite
piece of design, expressive as it is of the fore-
thought of the Creator, is made to be the mere
result of chance and good luck. Now the
whole subject of the colour of animals is one of
extreme interest, both to the naturalist and the
physiologist. In many instances it is produced,
as in the wing of the humming bird, by stria?
or lines on the ultimate plume or barb of the
feathers, which decompose the light, and produce
the beautiful colouring we see in that bird. In
others the colour is owing to the deposit of a
pigment, having the faculty of absorbing different
rays, or a mixture of rays. In others both of
these causes come into operation.

If we look at the similarity of colour in animals
to the various things among which they live, the
knowledge of the above facts will have a peculiar
significance. When we know that the same phy-
sical cause produces the colour of the desert or
the wood, as of the animals that live and feed
upon this organic matter so coloured, it is a just
inference that the cause of the colour in both
instances, that is, of the bird and the food upon
which it lives, is the same. In the rnsoriul bird

TRANSMUTABLE. 73

the colour of the plumage is owing both to pig-
ment and organic sculpturing. Thus, as Mr.
Tristram has remarked, the quail or the grouse of
the desert have a desert colour. The humming
bird's colour, on the other hand, is entirely pro-
duced by sculpture on the feathers, and it feeds
chiefly upon the nectar of flowers, which, we
may fairly assume, contains no colour pigment.

Are we then to say that the exquisite and
brilliant and harmonious plumage of the humming
bird is due to a mere accidental variation? or
that the protecting colour of the beetle or the
grouse, which are partly due to organic structure,
as in the humming bird, and partly to the organic
functions of digestion and assimilation, and the
deposit of pigment so formed? am I to be told,
or am I requested to answer the absurdity, that
this beautiful evidence of design, in the special
creation of the animal, is due to accident? The
answer to this query is found in No. 5 of Mr.
Darwin's illustrations of c 'natural selection." We
are there distinctly told that an ''accidental de-
viation in the size and form of the body, or in
the curvature and length of the proboscis, etc.,"
might ultimately produce by descent an important
alteration in the organic structure of the animal,
and he adds to this, the bungling error of
supposing the change to take place in the hive-bee,
by which it might reach the nectar in the long
tube of the corolla of the red clover, though un-
fortunately for the illustration, the worker hive-bee
is barren, and does not propagate its kind at all !

74 SPECIES NOT

Arid let us look for a moment at the other
illustrations.—

Imagine that certain wolves lived in a country
with certain deer and other small fry, on
which they fed. That a certain alteration took
place in the climate for a year or so, which
destroyed the small game, but left the deer; and
Mr. Darwin thinks it quite possible that all
but the swift wolves in consequence perished,
because they only could catch the deer. Hence
their descendants were altered or varied by being
a swifter race than the former wolf. AVhat he
gains by the sum of all these suppositions I am
at a loss to imagine. He only gets a swifter
wolf, which he very well knows, is as likely to
have a slow as a swift progeny. It does not
help his transmutation theory at all, for unfor-
tunately the animals among the carnivora, more
highly organized than the wolf, are the hyamas,
lions, tigers, cats, etc. The illustration therefore
is unfortunate.

AVith regard to the innate tendency of the
cub-wolf to pursue certain kinds of prey— being
born, in fact, with a peculiar tendency to "deer
stealing" — this mere supposition, if it were even
proved by the illustration taken from domesticated
animals, to wit, Mr. St. John's cats, would after
all only prove the fact that one wolf could run
faster than another.

With regard to the fourth illustration, the
alteration of the sexual condition of plants by
bees, as an instance of natural selection, it is like

TRANSMUTABLE. 75

the others, really worse than useless. For to give
even a shade of probability to such a speculation,
Mr. Darwin must prove that all diseceous plants
produce nectar, or are sought after by insects;
for, though I admit the frequency of this means
of fertilizing plants, I object most strongly to
the dogma of its being the chief or only means.
Look also at the difference between these plants;
what botanist would venture to say that the
black poplar and the dog's mercury were des-
cended from monoecious plants, the result of
inoculation by insects?

I confess that when we look back to the writings
of heathen authors, upwards of two thousand years
ago, we must feel something akin to shame, that
in these enlightened days, we find any scientific
men arguing for the possibility of chance having
anything whatever to do with the adaptive struc-
ture of organized beings.

"But that the beauty of the world might be
eternal," says Cicero, in his "Natura Deorurn,"
ugreat care has been taken by the providence of
the Gods to perpetuate the different kinds of
animals and vegetables. * With regard

to animals, do we not see with what judgment
they were made for the propagation of their
species? Nature for this end created some males
and some females." * uMany things must

be omitted on a subject so copious; for it is
impossible to relate the great utility of rivers,
the fiux and reflux of the sea, the mountains
clothed with grass and trees, the salt pits remote

76 SPECIES NOT

from 'the sea coasts, the earth replete with salu-
tary medicine, or, in short, the innumerable
designs of nature necessary for sustenance, and
the enjoyment of life. We must not forget the
vicissitudes of day and night, ordained for the
health of animated beings, giving them a time
to labour and a time to rest. Thus, if we every
way examine the universe, it is apparent from
the greatest reason, that the whole is admirably
governed by Divine Providence (mente consiiioquc
divino) for the safety and preservation of all
beings. And for whom," he continues, "was this
mighty fabric raised? For trees and vegetables?
—that would be absurd. For beasts? Nothing
can be less probable than that the Gods
should have taken such pains for beings void of
speech and understanding. For whom then? —
Undoubtedly for reasonable beings; these are the
Gods and men, who are certainly the most perfect
of all beings."

Now, I do not^for a moment believe that Mr.
Darwin would find fault with these noble senti-
ments, written by one of the greatest of classic
writers before the advent of Christianity; and
yet to what different conclusions do his acci-
dental variation and inexplicable theories lead?
Once admit that chance altered the organic
structure of any permanent inhabitant of the
world, and the whole superstructure of design
crumbles into dust.

The author of the "Vestiges" believed in spon-
taneous generation. Apply this belief to the

TRANSMUTABLE. 77

formation of Mr. Darwin's original organism, and
the whole face of living nature may be swept
away from the evidences of religion, and we
should have to fall back upon the "countless
spheres," where, fortunately, "natural selection"
can never reach.

78 SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER V.

The intercrossing of individuals is the next
subject treated of by Mr. Darwin ; and it gives
him an opportunity of enunciating a most ex-
traordinary and uncomfortable doctrine, namely,
that he believes "that it is a general law of
nature, (utterly ignorant though he be of the
meaning of the law,) that no organic being
self-fertilizes itself for an eternity of generations;
but that a cross with another individual is
occasionally (perhaps at very long intervals)
indispensible."

As this theory is supported in the present
volume by the weakest possible evidence, and as
Mr. Darwin confesses there are difficulties which
he is still endeavouring to solve, I will pass it
over with the simple expression, that I believe
it to be among the most improbable speculations
contained in the book. The circumstances
favourable to natural selection Mr. Darwin con-
siders are, — 1. — Large amount of inheritable
and diversified variability. 2. — Large number of
individuals. 3. — Large areas*of action. 4.-
I ntercrossing. 5 . — Isolation.

Extinction Mr. Darwin considers to be inti-
mately connected with "natural selection ;" because,
as this latter has to benefit the being, the less

TRANSMUTABLE. 79

favoured forms must become extinct. To illus-
trate his meaning upon this subject, Mr. Darwin
tells us to take a "carnivorous quadruped, of
which the number that can be supported in any
country has long ago arrived at its full average."
Then he argues that only the descendants of
this carnivor which vary can live, (and this by
assuming new habits,) some being enabled to
live on a change of prey, some inhabiting new
stations, climbing trees, frequenting water, and
some becoming perhaps less carnivorous.

Perhaps the domains of science cannot afford
a more purely gratuitous assumption than this,
and one at the same time totally opposed to
Mr. Darwin's own theory, that transmutation
only takes place by very slow changes, acting
through myriads of years. But, supposing the
ground occupied by the original race of carnivora,
whose average amount was made up, what be-
came of these descendants during the process
of modification? One has to have its organi-
zation altered for climbing trees; but if it has
to wait for myriads of years before it can effect
this, how does it exist and multiply? Another
has to get its living in water, in fact, to be
degraded in organization; but what became of
it during the immensity of time it was being
metamorphosed? Fancy a fox and descendants
gazing at some fish in the water for a hundred
millions of years, until it pleased natural selec-
tion to convert it into an otter ! And yet Mr.
Darwin's theory does violence of this kind to

SO SPECIES NOT

reason and common sense, in almost every page!

But does the less favoured form become ex-
tinct? Mr. Darwin says it does. Geology and
Professor Owen say it does not. "There are
characters in land animals rendering them more
obnoxious to extirpating influences, which may
explain why so muny of the larger species of
particular groups have become extinct, while
smaller species, of equal antiquity, have survived.
In proportion to its bulk is the difficulty of
the contest which the animal has to maintain

against surrounding agencies In a dry

season the large animal will suffer more than
the small one, both from drought and insufficiency
of food; if new enemies appear the small ones
will conceal themselves, and escape. Small quad-
rupeds, moreover, are more prolific than large
ones. Those of the bulk of the mastodons,
megatheria, glyptodons, and diprotodons, are
uniparous." — (Appendix to Classification and
Geographical Distribution of Mammalia, page 56.")

But extinction is a law of nature; we find
evidences of it throughout the whole record of
Geology. Unlike, however, Mr. Darwin's hypo-
thesis, all evidence is not hidden, but displayed by
the organisms of past worlds, and is equally
demonstratable by what we see passing before our
eyes in modern times. If the natural selection
theory were a law of nature, why should not
geology and modern history be equally explicit?

Then as to the succession of new species, which
Mr. Darwin attempts to explain by his theory.

TRANSMUTABLE. 81

"One might speculate," says Professor Owen,
"on the gradual modificability of the individual;
on the tendency of certain varieties to survive
local changes, and thus progressively diverge
from an older type; on the production and
fertility of monstrous offspring ; on the possibility,
for instance, of a variety of auk being occa-
sionally hatched with a somewhat longer wiriglet,
and a dwarfed stature; on the probability of
such a variety better adapting itself to the
changing climate, or other conditions, than the
old type, — of such an origin of Alca torda, for
instance, — but to what purpose? Past experience
of the chance aims of human fancy, unchecked
and unguided by observed facts, shews how
widely they have ever glanced away -from the
gold centre of truth" — (Op. Cit., page 58.)

Divergence of character is another link in
Mr. Darwin's chain. It is one of high impor-
tance to his theory. As species present well-
marked differences throughout nature, he accounts
for this by the lesser difference between varieties
being augmented, constituting divergence of
form. And here Mr. Darwin is obliged to give
up the doctrine of chances. "Mere chance, as
we may callt it, might cause one variety to
differ from another, and the offspring of this to
differ from its parent in a greater degree; but
this alone would never account for so habitual
and large an amount of difference as that
between varieties of the same species, and species
of the same genus."

82 SPECIES KOT

To prove tbis Mr. Darwin falls back upon
domestic productions — obviously tbe very worst
tbat he could cboose, inasmuch as the variations
of domesticity have no analogy whatever with
the variations of nature. He tells us that one
pigeon-fancier will breed all his stock from
short-necks, and another from long-necks; and
that a breeder of horses will, by always choosing
swift horses to cross with, establish a swift
race, as distinguished from the original slow
one. It is almost absurd to reason in this
way as a means of proving that species may be
transmuted. I will venture to say, that where
you have one variation in nature of a progres-
sive character, you have a thousand that are
retrogressive, and I can "easily imagine," as
Mr. Darwin so frequently remarks, how various
causes may conspire to degrade the original
typical animal form, but I cannot imagine, from
anything Mr. Darwin has written, a law of
variation acting either constantly or intermittingly,
either partially or universally, and producing
changes in organic structure which lead to the
transmutation of species.

I challenge Mr. Darwin, or any of his sup-
porters, to give me one single proof from the
animal world, where such a thing can either be
proved or safely inferred. I believe the char-
acters used by botanists to define species are
often very unsatisfactory. But even among
plants I think that no well-authenticated in-
stance of transmutation can be proved, including

TRANSMUTABLE. 83

even the solitary species which was made so
much use of by the author of the "Vestiges."

Among the assumed instances of transmutation,
that of the ^Egilops triticoides was considered
the best. Hear what a close inquiry into the
subject brings out: — "^Egilops triticoides. This
plant, which was considered by M. Fabre as a
stage in the transition of ^Egilops ovata into
cultivated wheat, has been shewn by Godron to
be a hybrid procured from M. ovata, fertilized
by the pollen of wheat. Regel in Germany,
Yilmorin and Greenland in Paris, and Planchon
at Montpellier, have confirmed this statement.
JEgilops triticoides is generally sterile, but it
sometimes bears fertile seeds. These seeds, when
sown, have produced plants called by M. Fabre,
Mgilops speltiforrnis. This has been shewn by
Godron to be a hybrid between JE. triticoides
and Triticum vulgare, common wheat. — ("Comptes
Rendues," 1858.)

My friend, Dr. Maclean, who has all his life
been making investigations into this subject,
denies even a common origin to the cowslip and
the primrose, and among the few strictly mule
plants which he has produced, he never knew an
instance of fertility, or obtained any satisfactory
evidence of such a fact in either the animal or
vegetable kingdoms.

Mr. Darwin admits that Gartner and Kolreuter
have devoted their lives to this subject, and he
attempts to reason away the conclusion they have
arrived at, which is, that sterility is universal,

84 SPECIES NOT

(Kolreuter,) or nearly so, (Gartner,) in nil
hybrids.

Mr. Knight says, "I could adduce many facts
which would satisfactorily prove that a single
plant is often the offspring of more than one,
and in some instances of many male parents.
Under such circumstances every species of plant,
which either in a natural state or cultivated by
man, has been once made to sport in varieties,
must almost of necessity continue to assume va-
riations of form. Some of these have often been
found to resemble other species of the same genus,
or other varieties of the same species, and of
permanent habits, which were assumed to be
species ; but / have never yet seen a hybrid plant
capable of affording offsjrring, which had been
proved by anything like satisfactory evidence to
have sprung from two originally distinct species ;
and I must therefore continue to believe that
there are no species capable of propagating off-
spring, either of plant or animal, now existing,
which did not come as such immediately from the
hand of the Creator." — Physiological Papers,
page 253.

Surely this work of Mr. Darwin is an exception
to every system of reasoning adopted by scientific
men. All his arguments are founded upon ex-
ceptional cases, and the great broad facts of science
he ignores with the most infatuated pertinacity.
He thinks much of the old maxim, "Natura non
facit saltum" but denies the equally true one
"Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret."

TRANSMUTABLE. 85

On the subject of hybrids, M. Agassiz has
some very pertinent remarks. He considers how-
ever, that the test of fertility should not be
applied as trustworthy evidence of specific identity,
so long as doubts may be entertained that uour
dogs, and other domesticated animals and cul-
tivated plants, are respectively derived from one
unmixed species."

"AVhere," he asks, "is the unprejudiced natur-
alist, who in our days would dare to maintain
First, that it is proved that all the domesticated
varieties of sheep, goats, bulls, llamas, horses,
dogs, fowls, etc., are respectively derived from
one common stock. Secondly, the supposition
that these varieties have originated from the
complete amalgamation of several primitively dis-
tinct species, is out of the question," etc., etc.
(Op. Cit, p. 251.)

Mr. Darwin however not only "dares" to go
the length of inferring, that all the dogs and
horses, etc., are derived from one common stock,
but that the vertebrata, nay all living things
have but one progenitor! But does he say,
as Agassiz remarks, that these statements are
proved? No such thing. He asks us to accept
them as part of his theory upon mere assump-
tion, and reviewers speak highly of the new
doctrine of creation! He gives us a theory of
the most improbable kind, supports it by others
still less reliable, and then asks us to surrender
all that science and philosophic investigation has
aftected up to this time. There is no via media

86 SPECIES NOT

between the speculations of Mr. Darwin and the
doctrine of special creation of living beings. If
the former is adopted, the latter must be given
up. What we have to decide is Dimply which
doctrine stands upon the broadest and soundest
basis. This is the question at issue, and that
which naturalists must settle without delay.

At the end of the fourth chapter, Mr. Darwin
attempts to illustrate his subject by the simile
of a large tree. "The green and budding twigs
may represent existing species; and those produced
during each former year, may represent a long
succession of extinct species. At each period of
growth, all the growing twigs have tried to branch
out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the
surrounding twigs and branches, in the sninc
manner as species have tried to overmaster other
species in the great battle for life. The limbs
were once budding twigs, and this connexion of
the former and present buds may well represent
the classification of all extinct and living species
in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many
twigs which flourished when the tree was young,
only two or three, now grown into great branches,
yet survive and bear all the other branches; so
with the species which lived during long past
geological periods, very few now have living and
modified descendants.

From the first growth of the tree, many a limb
and branch has decayed and dropped off; and
those lost branches of various sizes may represent
those whole orders, families, and genera, which

TRANSMUTABLE. 87

have now no living representatives, and which
are known to us only as fossils. As we now and
then see a thin straggling branch springing from
a fork low down, and which by some chance has
been favoured, and is still alive on its summit,
so we occasionally see an animal like the orni-
thorhyncus or lepidosiren, which in some small
degree connects, by its affinities, two large branches
of life, and which has apparently been saved
from fatal competition, by having inhabited a
protected station !

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds,
and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on
all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation
I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life,
which fills with its dead and broken branches the
crust of the earth, and covers the surface with
its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications." —
(pp. 129-30.)

I have quoted this simile at length, because it
well expresses Mr. Darwin's views, and it equally
well expresses my objections.

Let the tree be an oak, which has been standing
for a thousand years. Then I say the root and
stem represent the species a thousand years ago;
the brandies its various descendants; some have
lived to propagate their kind, others have died,
and are represented by the dead branches. Each
descendant has become in the shape of a large
branch the progenitor of other forms, but all of
the same species. The buds bursting into leaf,
under the sun of spring, represent the thousands

88 SPECIES NOT

upon thousands of descendants from the parent
stock. There is no struggle for existence. Each
bud, and leaf, and branch has its allotted period
of life, which, when passed, leaves behind it
successors to form fruit, and then be carried
to all parts of the world.

But the oak is an oak still. Look at the
myriads of acorns, which stud every branchlet,
containing within them the undying and eternal
representative of the original stem, which rose
up from its acorn a thousand years ago. Cut
open your acorn, look at the embryo which is to
be the future oak! There it is as perfect and
as unchanged as when it first came from the
Creating Will of an All-omnipotent Being. No
secondary causes here. The stamp of the Creator's
hand is indelibly fixed upon that embryo, and
no time shall change, and no force shall divert
it from the design, which fixed its position in
the beautiful world of nature. Gather ten thou-
sand million of these acorns from every part of
the world, and you will find no evidence of change !
The embryo will bud forth, and the radicle will
strike into the earth, and the plumule will raise
its fairy leaves to the morning sun, and it will
grow and grow, and another oak will descend to
ti distant posterity, and bear evidence then of
the permanence of species, of the unity of design,
and of the ineffable power and wisdom and
goodness of Him, who specially created it. For
what? I can imagine I hear some one say. — For
the use of man, the highest of all specially created

TRANSMUTABLE. 89

beings, is my answer. To carry him across the
ocean to distant lands, and there to spread abroad
the blessings of civilization, and to speak of Him
among the heathen and the savage ! Look again,
I say, at that oak, with its myriads of acorns,
you will find there is an abundance, greater than
is needed for the propagation of the species ; and
some you will find wither and decay, and others
are made use of by animals to live upon. Insects,
too, pierce the leaves with their ovipositors, and
produce one of the most useful articles of com-
merce. The bark contributes as much as perhaps
any natural production to man's comfort and
happiness.

Now are all these things produced by an acci-
dental variation occurring myriads of years ago,
and altered by successive changes and modifica-
tions? Or was that primeval acorn specially
formed and created by God? I will allow no
sophistry to convince me that secondary causes
produced this tree. It is to me evidence of de-
sign, and of creation specially adapted to a special
purpose, too strong to be rejected by any one
whose reason is perfect.

And if this is so of the oak, how much stronger
is the evidence of design in the attributes of
reasoning man. It is indeed an enormous stretch
of imagination to strain homologies into identities.
What though the paddle of the whale, or the wing
of the bird, has a similar arrangement of its bones
to that of the human hand? Does it not merely
shew that the same exquisite combination is made

90 SPECIES NOT

in each to perform the same abstract end? In
the fish and the bird that end is progression—
the one through the water, the other through the
air. In man the use is more varied, and the
arrangement of parts is more varied also; but
even as a means of progression how useful is
the human hand! In running, walking, swimming,
how much assistance is given by the hand of
man; but it is destined for other purposes con-
nected with a higher organization, and for which
it is variously, beautifully, and inimitably adapted.

But beyond the mere expression of the same
means of exercising a similar function, there is
really no resemblance between these so-called ho-
mological organs. Why were the bones of the
whale's limb made in the form of a paddle, ex-
cept to propel it through the water? Why were
the shaft bones of the wing of the bird made
hollow, and filled with air, unless it were to give
it buoyancy and lightness as a wing? Why
were the bones of the human hand made in neither
of these types, unless it were destined to form
an organ for grasping, for prehension?

But then again look at Mr. Darwin's deduction
that all lung-breathing animals have been derived
from a type having an organ like the swim
bladder of the fish? That the lung, say «>f
man, the most exquisite and elaborate piece of
Divine workmanship in the whole field of nature,
^iould be merely an altered bag used by fishes
generally for the same purpose as the hollow
bones of the bird, — or in particular instances

TRAXSMUTABLE. 91

affording them a supplementary means of res-
piration! The fact is, that without this swim
bladder Mr. Darwin could not get on a step;
because he knows full well that the gills of a
fish, — the trachea of the insect, — the mantle of
the oyster, — the beautiful respiratory sac of the
ascidian, — the tentacles of the polyzoa, — although
all made for breathing purposes, are only analo-
gous to the lung, or, in other words, the type
of organization is different arid distinct. The
swim bladder is the only, what is called honiology
to the lung of the higher vertebrata, which the
great chain of animated beings will give him.
But does not this display in strong light the
utter want of support which Mr. Darwin's theory
will get from known facts. If the organs I
have mentioned, which are adapted to the
functions of breathing, have no type in common
with the lung, there can be no conversion of
one into the other by Mr. Darwin's theory. He
does not, however, pretend to get over this in-
superable difficulty, but contents himself with
the expression of a belief that lung-breathing
animals were descended from an animal with a
swim bladder, — the prototype, and all intermediate
forms, being lost in the Imperfection of the
geological record!"

I will conclude this chapter by adducing one
or two instances of adaptation, which could only
have been the result of a great intelligence,
acting with forethought through the medium of
special creation. Such proofs, it is true, crowd

92 SPECIES NOT

upon us at every step we make in scientific
investigations, and it is only because the subject
has been considered exhausted by the Bridgewater
treatises, that they are not brought more pro-
minently forward. It is a common remark, why
illustrate design — it is as evident as the ground
we walk upon? To such a question the ap-
pearance of Mr. Darwin's book is a sufficient
answer. It is quite true that Mr. Darwin
remarks that when we talk of design, we merely
re-state his own arguments. I will leave the
intelligent reader to decide the truth of this
remark. The very essence of Mr. Darwin's
theory is utterly opposed to the operation of a
Great First Cause, acting by special creation
and p re-ordination.

As I have remarked before, variation, if it
means anything, means a divergence from a
normal form. Mr. Darwin peoples the world
with beings by means of such an abnormity.
He makes the Deity create a form perfect,
which shall have a long 'race of perfect descen-
dants, and then he introduces imperfection as
the means by which new forms are made to
appear in the world. If this is by design he
must assume that the primary creation was im-
perfect, but endowed with an inherent power,
by which it could produce individuals having
within them the greater elements of perfection!
Or, to illustrate it by another example. He
must assume that every living thing on the
earth is imperfect, which, in fact, he does, when

TRANSMUTABLE. 93

he states that he considers no living thing is
destined to transmit its unaltered form to a
far-distant posterity. If, then, the primordial
being was imperfect, — and all the living beings
now on the face of the earth are imperfect, —
you can form no notion whatever of the perfection
of Deity itself. Human reason consists essentially
in the power of comparison, and just as we are
able to understand what is good by comparing
it with evil, or what is true by comparison of
that which is false, heat by cold, wet by dry,
and so on; so it is by a comparison of the
works of nature, with our ideal notion of nature's
Creator, that the argument from natural theology
of the Creator's perfection is drawn. And if we
cannot believe in the perfection of the Deity, how
are we to believe that design, which is the most
wonderful of all the natural evidences of the God-
head, can be a reality. It is no answer to this
reasoning that secondary causes, as applied by Mr.
Darwin to the "variation" of species, display In-
finite Wisdom. Far from it! you can only compare
Mr. Darwin's uncertain, partial, intermittent law
of variation with the known facts of creative
wisdom and design, by allowing a degradation
of Divine Power, which I apprehend few will
be found to admit.

If, for instance, as an anatomist, I look at
the human hand or foot, I see the most ex-
quisite adaptation of bone, ligament, muscle,
blood-vessel, and nerve, each performing a separate
function, and the whole constituting the most

94 SPECIES NOT

wonderful and startling structure that my finite
mind can conceive. As a physiologist 1 know
that this hand and foot are as perfect as any-
thing to which such a term can be applied. I
know also, that, though formed on the same
plan just as a mechanic will apply his lever, or
his pulley, or his hinge, to accomplish very di-
versified works, — yet that this hand and foot
are unlike anything else in nature. And further,
I know by the study of the functions of the
different parts in these structures, that if any
part were removed or any added, that they would
be imperfect and useless. Therefore I infer,
first, that the hand and foot were designed by a
being with thought, foreknowledge, wisdom, and
goodness; and secondly, I compare by my reason,
the work with the thought of its designer, and
I thus form a certain and immovable impression
in my mind, that that being is Perfect. As,
however, I have no superiorly-formed hand or
foot with, which to compare those of man, I
am not mentally competent to imagine that any
similar structures could be more perfect; and
us a comparative anatomist, I know that there
is nothing lower in the scale that is identical
with the hand or foot of mau. My studies
lead me to the knowledge that certain apes
and monkeys possess four hands, made after the
same model as my own; but I immediately
recognise the fact that if those hands were
removed to my body, and my hands and feet
to the body of the ape, that, instead of two

TRANSMUTABLE. 95

perfectly-organized beings, each adapted to its
position in the world, I should produce two
monsters, totally incapable of existing in their
allotted spheres.

Again, in examining the anatomy of the human
body, I find that all the nutritious part of the
food which is eaten by man, is collected into a
long tube, called the thoracic duct, for the
purpose of being conveyed into the blood, where
it subserves the purposes of nutrition. Now I
find this duct opening into the veins where
two of them meet, one coming from the head,
another from the upper extremity; and I see
with admiration and delight that this important
thoracic duct, upon which the existence of the
being depends, opens exactly in the angle formed
by the junction of the two large veins, and I
know by other means of study that this angle
is exactly the spot, and the only spot, in which
the duct could open without the fluid regurgi-
tating, and thus being impeded in its entrance
into the blood! Well, I ask myself, was this
the result of a chance, or even a pre-ordained
variation? To the first question, only men
without reason would say yes. The second
must be true if Mr. Darwin's theory is sound.
But then again, as a comparative anatomist, I
carry my mind's eye down the scale of nature,
and I come to forms in which there is 110
thoracic duct at all! Now, immediately my
reason tells me that this ductless animal never
could have been altered into one with the

96 SPECIES NOT

beautiful provision made for the higher animals,
as mentioned above, by a law of variation ! That
the change, if even made in an ascending series
of organisms, must have been made by special
creation, and not by "selection."

Going on still further in my enquiries, I
look at the blood itself, which flows in the
human veins, arid placing it under the micro-
scope, I find that it is composed of a vast
number of round flat discs, floating in a clear
watery fluid. Further examination shews me
that between the two great systems of blood-
vessels, the veins and the arteries, there is an
intermediate net-work of fine delicate tubes, each
about one two-hundredth part of an inch in length,
and only capable of allowing the passage of a
single blood-disc, which, according to the mea-
surement of Gulliver and Wharton Jones, is
one three thousand two hundredth of an inch
in diameter, and twelve thousand four hundredth
of an inch in thickness! What a beautiful
thought of the divine architect is here, exclaims
the student. How admirably adapted the disc
for its tube, and the whole applied for the
purposes of growth and the renewal of waste.
But then, says the Darwinian, other animals
have blood and capillaries as well. Why may
not this admittedly beautiful adaptation be the
result of successive "variations" by "natural
selection ?"

My answer to this question is, that it could
not have been so for the following reasons: —

TRANSMUTABLE. 97

1. — The human blood-disc has special characters
of its own, by which it can be distinguished
from that of every other animal; so much so,
that a good microscopist is able to swear in
a court of justice that the stain he is shewn
is that of human blood. 2. — Each class or
genus of animals has also a specially-characterized
blood-disc. Thus, that of the Cervus Eevisii is
only one six thousand three hundred and thirtieth
of an inch in diameter, that of the elephant one
two thousand seven hundred and forty-fifth of
an inch. In birds, reptiles, and fishes, they
are no longer circular, but oval. In birds the
long diameter is one two thousand and fifth, by
one three thousand three hundred and sixty-
ninth. In frogs one thousand one hundred and
eighth long, by one thousand eight hundred and
twentieth short. The corpuscle of the proteus
is twice as large as that of the frog, which is
three times as large as that of man! Among
the invertebrate class, the blood corpuscle of the
earth-worm is a thousandth part of an inch in
length, by one thousand two hundredth broad.
The leech one three thousandth long, by one
three thousand six hundredth broad.

Surely a contemplation of facts like these
must set at rest for ever the possibility of any
" variation" of structure being at the foundation
of the origin of species.

Still keeping to the anatomy of the human
body, I might carry the blood into the lung,
and describe the various processes which are

98 SPECIES NOT

undergone there in the production of animal
heat. I could point out how admirably adapted
is that exquisite organ, the lung, to perform
this function. How it is provided that on the
average at least twenty-six pounds of Llood
pass through these organs every three minutes
and a half of our existence, from the cradle to
the grave. How of this twenty-six pound? at
least one-sixth is composed of blood-discs, each
of which is only the three thousand two hundredth
part of an inch in diameter, and each of which
has to pass separately from artery to vein, and
along the capillaries every three minutes and a
half. And I could then ask the reader to fol-
low me down to fishes, where all traces of a
lung cease, and from them through the great
scale of living beings, in which there is not
only no vestige of a lung, but as we get lower
and lower, not even any vestige of a special
respiratory apparatus at all; and then, I might
triumphantly ask, where is the possibility that
this exquisite organ, the lung, could have been
produced by variation in beings in which not a
vestige of it existed? But all this would occupy
too much space, and I must therefore proceed
with one or two more illustrations of adaptive
design.

Well then, there is a very obvious and beau-
tifuj instance of it which fell under my notice
while reading a few days ago researches into the
minute anatomy of the nervous system, by the
celebrated Van der Kolk.

TRANSMUTABLE. 99

In the class Mammalia only, there are situated
on the anterior and lateral aspect of the medulla
oblongata, two masses of nervous matter, termed
the Corpora olivaria. Now these bodies are
much smaller in animals than in man. In the
latter, according to Valentine, they are about
five by three Parisian lines. In the chimpanzee
they are only two lines in length. Now these
small nervous masses are intimately connected
with the function of speech; but they have also
another use, because they exist in animals which
do not talk, and they are connected in man
with other portions of the medulla which preside
over other functions. In examining the medulla
of the cow, Yari der Kolk was astonished to
find two of these bodies on each side. In two
apes, the Cercopithecus cynomolyifs and Cyno-
cephalus papio, he found them single, but smaller
than in man, and commencing higher up, but,
like tliuse in man, they extend to the inferior
roots of the hypoglossus nerve, and are con-
nected with it. In the cat, dog, rabbit, Cavia
aguti, horse, ass, and cow, they are double, —
the upper one being in connection with the
facial nerve, the lower one with the hypoglossal
nerve. In structure both these olivary bodies in
brutes are the same as in man, with the excep-
tion of forming fewer convolutions, and having
only a feeble trace of a hilus. Yan der Kolk
found that the superior olivary bodies differ
considerably in animals. They are more highly
developed in beasts of prey than in the rodentia,

100 SPECIES NOT

and are still smaller in the herbivora.

Now Van der Kolk clearly makes out that in
addition to the known function of presiding over
articulation and speech, these bodies especially are
connected with those muscles of the face by which
the passions are expressed. Thus in the beasts
of prey these bodies are highly developed, and
the expression of the passions is much stronger
in the carnivora than in the herbivora, as shewn
by Bell.

The muscles which produce the snarling ex-
pression of a dog or wolf, are wanting in the
herbivora, in which as well as the ass, which has
very little expression, the Corpora oUvaria, arc
small. In the seal, whose skin is so unyielding,
that no expressive movements take place, the
superior corpora olivaria arc entirely iranthiy.

Now I should like to be informed by any of
Mr. Darwin's disciples how he accounts for this
difference in an important structure, even in
animals closely allied, unless by special adapta-
tion in a special creation? It would be perfect
nonsense to argue that nervous matter, which
presides over certain movements, could be altered
by use, because we have seen that it in fact
causes these movements. Equally absurd would
be the argument that they could be produced
by any correlation of growth. In fact it is ut-
terly impossible that the same form could ever
vary so as to exhibit permanent alterations of
this kind without special creation. To suppose
that natural selection could do it, is to indulge

TRANSMUTABLE. 101

in a dream of useless and unintelligible specula-
tion.

I copy the following from the "Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal, for April, I860:"— "Wei-
lingtonia gigantea. — But if the wood is fresh the
bark is not. Our friends found it a great deal
worse to cut through than wood. It is tough and
stringy, like coir or the husk of coco-nut, and is
from a foot to a foot and a half in thickness.
We have here one of those beautiful adaptations
of structure to purpose which delights the mind
to trace. It is obvious that if the Wellingtonia,
being so fragile, were coated with bark of only
a common thickness and ordinary consistence, it
never could live to be a tree ; it would be snapped
across by the first wind that blew, so soon as it
reached a sufficient height to give the wind a
hold upon its branches; but with a coating of
bark so thick, so tough, so stringy, so spongy,
and so elastic, it is kept in its place, and pro-
tected from its own fragility^ and, as has been
pointed out to me by my intelligent friend Mr.
Bryson. this support is given in the way which
modern science has ascertained to furnish the
greatest amount of strength with the least waste
of substance.

The bark is constructed on a different plan
from that of most other trees; it is on the plan
of the corrugated roof, running longitudinally round
the tree; the corrugated layers are composed of
harder texture, and the interstices are packed
with an elastic spongy substance.

102 SPECIES NOT

Another adaptation of structure exhibited in
this tree is the great gnarled expansion of its
trunk at the base, which may be seen in the
plate and vignette, thus supporting it against the
wind by what may be called a circle of buttresses."
— Mr. Murray, in "Notes on Californian Trees,"
in "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, April,
1.860."

Here is another extract from the same Journal :
—"Comparing the growth of the swallow fed
by the parent birds, with that of the young
of the turkey, common fowl, and goose, which
have to find their food, a marked difference is
observable, the growth of the one being so much
more rapid than that of the other. Again, if
we compare the eggs of these birds, which feed
their young till they are capable of taking wing,
with the eggs of those which have to provide for
themselves, the latter will be found proportionally

larger How little, as regards size, does the

egg of the eagle 4iflcr from that of the goose;
how very small is the egg of the cuckoo compared
with that of the partridge, the latter birds dif-
fering but little in size. And is there not design
in this, as well as in the different degrees of
rapidity of growth? Is not the gosling during
the first days of its existence, after leaving the
egg, more dependent for nourishment on the re-
sidual included \olk than the eaglet? and is it
not so in other instances.

In the mammalia there appears to be a relation
between the period of growth required for the

TRANSMUTABLE. 103

attainment of their maximum power, and their
duration of life; but in birds this relation seems
to be entirely set aside; and is it not because
a rapid attainment of their full power is essential
to their existence?" — Dr. John Davy, on the
"Growth of Birds," Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal, April, 1860, p. 262.

104 SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER VI.

THE "Law of Variation" is the title of Mr.
Darwin's fifth chapter, and lie commences it by
repudiating the charge that he has been advocating
the doctrine of chances as the cause of variation.
He considers the change as one produced by uan
alteration" of the reproductive system, to which
the parents or their remote ancestors have been
subjected. In other words, we are "profoundly
ignorant" of the whole subject.

It is however eminently necessary to Mr. Dar-
win's theory, that the I: no ten causes of variation
should have little influence— the vnknoirn mnrli.
Therefore the eifects of climate, food, etc., Mr.
Darwin considers slight. But surely cabbages,
celery, the potato, asparagus, cucumbers, various
fruits, all our cultivated flowers and domestic
animals can be brought in strong array against,
him. Here we see before our eyes every day the
effect follow its cause with perfect uniformity.
Mr. Darwin prefers however his "selection" or
unknown cause to those which are obvious as
daylight.

Use and Disuse are also dealt with by Mr.
Darwin, and here he treads upon ground already
occupied and used up by Lamarck. He thinks that
birds which are found in oceanic islands in a nearlv

TRANSMUTABLE. 105

wingless condition, are so by virtue of the disuse
of their wings, in consequence of no animals of
prey living thereon. The difficulty of the Ostrich,
which does live without wings, and among beasts
of prey, Mr. D. gets over by imagining that its
early progenitor had habits like a bustard, and
that "as natural selection increased in successive
generations the size and weight of its body, its
legs were used more, and its wings less, until they
became incapable of ilight!"

And yet in the same chapter, which contains
this improbable absurdity, Mr. Darwin denies that
his laws of variation have anything to do with
"chance." But what a strange power is this
which Mr. Darwin substitutes for "creation." It
first develops wings in an ostrich's progenitor,
and then allows them to dwindle away as useless
appendages !

Wingless beetles in Madeira, the eyes of moles,
the Styrian cave animals, which, living in dark-
ness are blind, all in turn receive Mr. Darwin's
notice, and are adduced as instances of the re-
tarded development of organs owing to disuse in
progenitors.

This subject has been well handled by Mr.
Murray, in a late number of the "Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal," and these very blind beetles
are adduced as evidence against Mr. Darwin, for
it is certainly upon his theory inexplicable that
cave beetles should be found in various parts of
the world, arid of species closely allied, yet dif-
ferent, and yet in all cases blind. How can this

106 SPECIES NOT

be reconciled upon the hypothesis of a common
origin for creatures destined to live for ever in
a dark cave, and not likely to "emigrate," or
get upon a "glacier." In fact I think Mr.
Murray's argument is unanswerable.

The following is an extract from Mr. Murray's
paper, (Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal,
No. I.,, January, 1860, page 149:)— "The most
striking fact, and the one which to my mind
disposes of the whole matter, is the existence of
species of the same genera of eyeless insects, ex-
isting in the vast subterranean isolated caves of
Carniola, allied, and exceedingly closely allied to
similar species in the caves of Hungary ; to similar
but different species in the caves of the Pyrenees ;
to similar but different species in the caves of
Auvergne; and more than all to similar but dif-
ferent species of the same genera in the mammoth
cave of Kentucky. Each of those set of caves
lias a different set of species of the same genera,
jii id all very closely allied. The physical condition
of the place being the same, the product has been
the same; but not by immigration, nor any means
of distribution which we can imagine. Can iden-
tical species, (for remember the theory implies that
congenerous species are identical, or, what is the
same thing, their descendants,) be found in caves
so widely separated; arid it is not the common
case of congenerous species found very wide apart,
which may yet have traversed the intervening
space, because these insects are found nowhere
but in caves, arid not in them until you have

TRANSMUTABLE. 107

penetrated far — far into the interior, usually about
a couple of miles. Another instance may be drawn
from our own coasts. We have a small beetle,
which lives here between high and low water
mark, Aepus fulvescens, between the leaves of
shale. A closely allied form, but quite distinct,
Thalasobius testaceous, is found in like circum-
stances on the coast of Chili. Here again like
physical condition, like product. Take another
instance; — of late years ants' nests have been found
to contain a considerable number of species of
beetles, which live with the ants, are often ex-
cessively like them, and sometimes are unprovided
with eyes. The same peculiarity prevails here —
allied species and nothing but allied species in
tints' nests, wherever they are." "Further, it were
easy to draw abundance of proof of the fact, that
congenerous species are at all events always found
in similar physical conditions of life.'11

But does Mr. Darwin suppose that the Creator,
who placed these creatures in the spot destined
for their home, was likely to give them organs
which they were never to use? In the case of
moles, there are times when for their personal
safety a certain degree of sight is necessary, and
therefore it is given to them. But if disuse will
deprive an animal of its wings, why do they not
disappear in our ducks, geese, and poultry?

Certain female insects have no wings, or only
rudimentary ones. The object of their existence
is to deposit their eggs, and then they die; and
this is observed in some species of moths of all

108 SPECIES NOT

sizes, from the Psyche up to Nyssia. Now
why should this be so? Why should some of
these female moths have wings, while others are
entirely apterous? And why is the instinct of
the male moth so unerringly correct in leading
him to the resting-place of his mate? Mr. Dar-
win may call these variations accidental alterations,
which have been perpetuated for the "good" of
the insect by "natural selection," etc.

For my part, I should conceive such an expla-
nation to be not only bordering upon impiety, but
in the highest degree improbable, and quite as
unlikely to be the true one, as that the same
law first gave a bird wings, and then deprived
it of them by natural selection. I see nothing
in nature so bungling and slovenly as this. 1
observe the most perfect harmony in all she
does; and if in some instances I cannot under-
stand what I see, I am content to place this
to the account of that imperfection which must
ever be attached to a finite mind, when it
attempts to unravel the mysteries of the infinite.

Acclimatization is dismissed in a few words.
Mr. Darwin considers that the period of flowering,
the amount of rain required for the germination
of the seed, and the sleep of plants, is due to
"hereditary habit," — a statement certainly not less
extraordinary than a hundred others in this very
extraordinary work. Fancy a ilrnver getting a
"habit" of shutting its petals, and going to sleep
at a certain hour every day, irrespective of
weather! I confess that when, as I have often

TKANSMUTABLE. 109

done, I have contemplated with pleasure the
order and regularity with' which this is effected
hy flowers, I never dreamt of such a thing as
"habit" having anything to do with the pro-
cess. Why not say that the sleep of the animal
is a "habit." A seed is kept in a dry mummy
case for two or three thousand years without
germinating; you give it moisture, and so en-
able certain chemical changes to take place, and
the seed grows. This so-called habit then is a
law of nature. It suits Mr. Darwin, however,
to propound the doctrine, that because plants
transported from one climate to another, become
acclimatized or ''habituated" to different temper-
ature, they do this by uhabit;" and he raises
this extraordinary theory to get over the difficulty
in his way, of species of the same genus inhabiting
very hot and very cold countries! If they do
this by "habit," he at once claims the fact as
"being effected during long continued descent
from a single parent!"

If however they are adapted to different climates
by a natural law, implanted in them when spe-
cially created, there is, of course, an end to Mr.
Darwin's hypotheses, and the whole theory of his
book falls to the ground. To support his view,
he mentions the limited evidence of Dr. Hooker's
rhododendrons, raised from seed, gathered at dif-
ferent heights in the Himalaya mountains, being
found in this country to possess different con-
stitutional powers of resisting cold; and similar
results have been communicated to him by Mr.

110 SPECIES NOT

Thwaites and Mr. II. C. Watson, of plants from
Ceylon and the Azores.

As no references are given of these experiments,
it is presumed they are not published, and con-
sequently cannot form part of my argument.

The cases of migration of animals from warmer
to cooler climates are merely given on hearsay,
and we shall see hereafter the glacial theory
brought forward to account for the wide separation
of species from their assumed centres of origin.

Correlation of growth in this chapter receives
a more extended notice than it has hitherto
done, and some of the more remarkable views
held by Mr. Darwin are developed. The points
detailed in the first part of the chapter I have
before alluded to. I will confine myself now to
the consideration of two propositions which rise
out of Mr. Darwin's views of correlation, and
upon which he lays much stress.

1. — "J part developed in any species in an
extraordinary manner, in comparison with the
same part in allied species, tends to be highly
variable.11— (Page 150.)

Here Mr. Darwin is obliged from the limit of
his work, to defer the facts upon which he in-
tends to support this proposition. This is unfor-
tunate, because in the outset it is clear that it
bears strongly upon the unavoidable result of
Mr. Darwin's views, that the human race is only
a modification or higher development of that of
the ape. Mr. D. infers that Mr. Owen is a be-
liever in the proposition, from an observation

TRANSMUTABLE. Ill

made by that distinguished comparative anatomist
with respect to the length of the arm of the
orang-outang.

I cannot do better than give Professor Owen's
views with regard to the Gorilla, both as an
answer to the above, I think, -very unfair infer-
ence of Mr. Darwin, and also to set at rest, as
far as can be done by the highest authority,
and a deduction of the soundest character from
facts, the transmutation doctrine itself. The evi-
dence now to be adduced in fact breaks down
Mr. Darwin's theory altogether. It is so complete
an answer to the book, though published before
it, that I might lay down my pen did I not
think it an act of fairness to go through the
whole.

The Gorilla is the most anthropoid ape known,
according to Professor Owen. In this opinion
however, it is right to say that other comparative
anatomists do not concur. Dr. Wyman, Professor
of Anatomy, Boston, U.S., and Professors Duvernoy
and Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, of Paris, con-
cur in ascribing the nearest approach to man
to the chimpanzee. Professor Owen's analysis
however of the entire question, (which may be
seen either in the Proceedings of the Zoological
Society, Part I., January to March, 1859, or in
the Appendix to his "Lecture on the Classification
of the Mammalia." Parker and Son, 1859,) is
a masterly specimen of scientific induction and
sound reasoning.

There are three apes, all inhabitants of the

1 \'2 SPECIES NOT

old world, which approach more or less in structure
to that of the human race. 1st.— The chimpan-
zee, the Homo troglodytes of Linnreus, more cor-
rectly named by Blmnenbach, Simia troglodytes.
2nd. — The orang-outang, or wood-man of the
natives of Borneo, from whence the creature was
first procured. 3rd. — The Gorilla, or, as it is
named by Owen, Troglodytes gorilla, which was
discovered in 1847, in the Gamboor river, in the
west coast of Africa, by Dr. Savage, a missionary,
and described by Owen in the Transactions of the
Zoological Society for 1848. This latter creature
has since then been received dead in England,
and there are two stuffed specimens in the British
Museum. All about its structure and habits will
be found in the works alluded to by Professor
Owen ; or a very good description may be obtained
for sixpence, in one of the early numbers of
"Cassell's Illustrated Natural History."

It is not my intention here to enter into a
detail <»f the anatomy of this creature. I will
however relate the results of Professor Owen's
researches. I may state that a fourth ape, the
Gibbon, has been considered by Lartet, a French
palaeontologist, as approaching nearer to man than
the others, and this opinion has been accepted
by Sir C. Lyell, (Supplement to Fifth Edition of
•-.Manual of Elementary Geology," 1859, p. 15.)

It is sufficient to state that Professor Owen
has clearly proved that the Gorilla is the most
anthropoid ape; but it matters little to the ar-
gument which of the four is assumed to be, for

TRANSMUTABLE. 113

they are all physiologically and anatomically dis-
tinct, and widely so from the human form.

The chief distinctions between the Gorilla and
man are 1st. — The almost total absence of neck.
2nd. — The backward junction of the head to the
trunk. 3rd. — The great length of the cervical
spines. 4th. — The projection of the nape beyond
the occiput. 5th. — The great size and elevation
of the scapulae. 6th. — The oblique rising of the
clavicles from their sternal attachments to above
the level of the angles of the jaw. 7th. — The
brain-case low and narrow. 8th. — The lofty ridges
of the skull making the cranial profile pass in
almost a straight line from the occiput to the
super-orbital ridge. 9th. — The ears much smaller
in proportion than those of man. 10th. — On a
direct view of the face the ears are on the same
parallel with the eyes. llth. — Hugely-developed
canine teeth enabling it to match its great strength
with the lion. 12th. — In the greater development
of the limbs. 13th. — The arm and fore-arm pre-
serve a uniform thickness from shoulder to elbow,
and from elbow to wrist. 14th. — The leg increases
in thickness from knee to ankle. 15th. — There
is no calf.

16th. — The thumb only extends a little beyond
the base of the proximal phalanx of the fore-
finger, while in man it extends to or beyond the
middle of the first phalanx of the fore-finger.
17th. — The fore-arm passes into the hand without
forming a wrist, and is fourteen inches in cir-
cumference, vice eight inches in a strong man.

114 SPECIES NOT

18th. — Great breadth and thickness of the hand.
19th. — Shortness of the digits. 20th. — Circum-
ference of digit five inches and a half, vice two
inches and three-quarters in man. 21st. — The
thumb is scarcely half as thick as the fore-finger.
22nd. — The thigh above the knee is thicker in
proportion than in man. 23rd. — The thigh is
only eight-ninths of the length of the humeras;
in man it is one-sixth longer. 24th. — The foot
is more like a hand than it is in man. 25th.—
Man has twelve pairs of ribs; the Gorilla has
thirteen. 26th. — The canine teeth are largely
developed; the bicuspids are implanted by three
distinct fangs ; in the human race by two. 27th.
— The canine teeth are developed permanently in the
Gorilla, but only in the male sex, when the animal
is still nourished by the mother, shewing that ifs
future condition is designed. In man there are
no sexual distinctions in the teeth.

28th. — The ape is a four-footed or hand-
footed animal; man is the only being in the
world formed entirely for the erect posture.
29th. — The inner toe, the first to dwindle and
disappear in brutes, is developed in man into a
great toe, by which he has that co-ordinate
motion with the heel, which gives elasticity to
his step. 30th. — In man there are in the foot
two bony arches, one formed by the tarsal and
' metacarpal bones, the pier of the arch being at
the heel and great toe; the other arch transverse
to this, is formed by a combination of the cunei-
form and cuboid bones. But there are no such

TRANSMUTABLE. 115

modifications in the Gorilla, or other apes. 31st.
-The lower limbs in man are longer in propor-
tion to the trunk than in any other mammalian
animal. 32nd. — In no animal is the femur so
long in proportion as in man. 33rd. — In no
animal does the tibia expand so much at its
upper end. 34th. — In man only is the innermost
condyle of the femur longer than the outermost.
35th. — The pelvis in man is formed of shorter
iliac bones than the Gorilla; they are more bent
forwards, and are more expanded behind to give
attachment to the glutei muscles, which are de-
veloped to a maximum in man. 36th. — The
tuberosities of the ischium are rounded, not an-
gular, and not inclined outwards, as in the Go-
rilla and ape tribe, and the symphisis pubis is
shorter. 37th. — The vertebral column of -man is
designed for a creature to walk erect.

38th. — The arms of man are brought into more
symmetrical proportions with the lower limbs,
and their bony framework shews all the perfec-
tions that have been superinduced upon it in the
mammalian series, namely, a complete clavicle, a
broad scapula with the glenoid articulation turned
outwards, the clavicle bent in a sigmoid flexure,
the humerus exceeding in length the bones of the
fore-arm. The carpal bones are eight. The
thumb in man is developed far beyond any de-
gree exhibited by the highest quadrumana, and
is the most perfect opposing digit in the animal
creation. 39th. — The skull of man is distin-
guished from every other animal by (a) the

116 SPECIES NOT

enormous expansion of the brain-case; (b) the
restricted growth of the bones of the face, especially
of the jaws, in relation to the small equally -
developed teeth; and (c) by the early obliteration
of the maxillo inter-maxillary suture.

40th. — The skull of man is further distinguished
from all apes, or other animals, by the peculiar
and beautiful manner in which it is balanced
on the neck, and the articulation is so designed
as to protect parts, the slightest injury to which
would cause instant death. 41st. — Man has
not the strongly-developed frontal crest seen in
the apes — a structure which no muscular power,
as effects of use or disuse, can possibly be sup-
posed to produce, and which is therefore a
pre-ordained peculiarity in the ape. 4i)ml.
There are no bony crests on the upper convexity
of the human skull. And to these distinctions
may be added 43rd. — The brain of man is the
only organ of the kind in the animal world,
which can be placed in the mammalian division
Archencephala, (from archo — to overrule, enceph-
alos — brain.)

44th. — With this peculiarity of structure, and
form of brain, is associated in man the highest
of all intelligence — reason. Man builds himself
a house, and can improve it: the Gorilla slings
a hammock in his tree, which he never encloses
with a roof or improves.

Now the peculiarities I have above mentioned
as distinguishing man from the quadrumaria, are
not observed between the different varieties of

TRANSMUTABLE. 117

the human species. The human race differ 1st.
— "In size from the Bushmen and Laplander,
who are four to five feet, to some of the Ger-
manic and Patagonian Indians, who are six to
seven feet." 2nd. — uln colour they differ ex-
tremely, but we know how much of this is due
to climatic causes. The Jews, for instance, for
the last eighteen hundred years, have been a
dispersed and wandering race in all climates,
and they have remained a distinct race. There
are however Jews still living in the Valley of
Jordan, an oppressed and ill-used race, who are as
Hack as the Ethiopian" 3rd. — "The differences
in the bony structure are almost confined to the
pelvis and cranium, the former is a slight but
constant difference, the latter clearly traceable to
the effects of mental culture upon the size of
the brain; the pre-maxillary bone is only found
to exhibit a marked suture or distinction from
the maxillary in very early foetal life, while in
the chimpanzee and orang it may be observed in
the latter, at least as late as the second denti-
tion." 4th. — "On a comparison of the basis of
the skulls of all human varieties, the strictly
bi-manous character of the position of the foramen,
magnum, and occipital condyles is observed equally
well displayed in the highest as the lowest."

Upon these and other more detailed grounds,
Professor Owen has come to the conclusion that
MAN FORMS ONE SPECIES; uand in no case can a
well-marked definite line be drawn between the
physical characteristics, of allied varieties, these

118 SPECIES NOT

MERGING MORE OR LESS GRADUALLY THE ONE 1XTO
THE OTHER."

Professor Owen admits that the skeleton is, to a
certain extent, modificable hy the action of mus-
cles, as is seen in the growth of the skull in young
carnivora, or the sternum of the young bird.
But he remarks, "The prominent superorbital
ridge of the Gorilla is not the consequence or
concomitant of muscular development, as there
are no muscles attached to it" ult is charac-
ter istic of the genus Tn>>ti tub/fes from the time
of birth to extreme old age." The equable length
of the human teeth, the absence of any bivak
in the series, and any sexual development of
particular teeth, he regards as primitive <m<l
unalterable specific peculiarities of man. "The
crown of the great canine tooth of the male T.
Gorilla began to be calcified when its diet //v.v
precisely the same as the female, when both sexes
derived their sustenance from the mother's milk."
uThe whole crown of the great canine is in fact
calcified before it cuts the gum, or displaces its
small deciduous predecessor; the weapon is pre-
pared prior to the development of the forces by
which it is wielded; it is therefore a structure
fore-ordained, a pre-determined character of the
great ape, by which that creature is made phy-
sically superior to man; and one can as little
conceive the development of the canine tooth to
be a result of external stimulus, or as being
influenced by the muscular actions as the devel-
opment of the stomach, or of any internal gland."

TRANSMUTABLE. 119

The same remark applies to the divergent
i?angs of the pre-molar teeth. "There is not, in
fact, any other character than those founded upon
the developments of bone, for the attachment of
muscles, which is known to be subject to change
through the operation of external causes; nine-
tenths therefore of the differences, especially those
very striking ones, manifested by the pelvis and
pelvic extremities, which I have cited in the
memoirs on the subject published in the Zoolo-
gical Transactions, as distinguishing the gorilla
and chimpanzee from the human species, must
stand in contravention of the hypothesis of trans-
mutation and progressive development, until the
supporters of that hypothesis are enabled to
adduce the facts and cases which demonstrate
the conditions of the modifications of such cha-
racters"

I have been anxious to shew in a condensed
form the opinions upon this all-important subject
of the highest living authority; and no one can
read this book without thanking God that the
cause of Science and Truth is supported by a
pillar like that of Richard Owen — a man whose
name will live long after the propounders of
unsound theories and hypotheses, unsupported
either by fact or scientific truth, shall have been
consigned to the same category of writers as those
who believed that geese were produced from
barnacles.

I have given these extracts at length, because
the same mode of reasoning which applies to the

120 SPECIES NOT

differences between the ape and man, applies with
even greater force, to all other separate and
distinct organisms.

If there are these insurmountable differences
between creatures having so much in common
as the ape and human species, how much greater
must be the difference between the radiate
and mollusc, between the crustacean and the
fish, the reptile and the bird, or the bird and
the mammal? or between the different genera
and orders of the sub-kingdoms of the animal
and vegetable world.

How utterly indefensible are the speculations
of Mr. Darwin, when the clear and ummstal'abJe
and unanswerable facts of Science are brought
to boar upon them.

TRAXSMUTABLE. 121

CHAPTER VII.

I PASS on now to a further consideration of
Mr. Darwin's rule, as detailed in the first prop-
osition, and from which the necessary digression
about the apes has for a moment taken me.
Mr. 1). tells us this rule is of high generality,
but only applicable when the part, however un-
usually developed, is so in comparison with the
same part in allied species. Thus Mr. D. thinks
the bat's wing is a most uabnormal" structure
in the class mammalia, but his rule does not
apply to bats, because there is a whole group
of these animals with wings! Mr. D. gives one
example of the rule from the Cirripides, namely,
the opercular valves of the rock barnacles are in
every sense very important structures, and differ
little in different genera; but in Pyrgoma they
differ greatly, and the individuals of several of
the species differ more from each other in these
characters than species of distinct genera.

Mr. Darwin says the rule applies strongly to
birds, but gives no examples. It fails however
in plants, because it is ''difficult to compare
their relative degrees of variability."

Having given the above most meagre and un-
satisfactory reasons for believing in a law of the
greatest importance to his theory, Mr. Darwin
begins to generalize upon it, and turn it to ac-

\'2'2 SPECIES NOT

count. He can see no explanation of the fact
in special creation, but can easily understand it
on the view that groups of species have descended
from other species, and Ifave been modified by
"natural selection." In the earlier part of the
volume, and frequently in its course, Mr. D. dwells
upon the enormous number of generations neces-
sary to produce the transmutation of species. He
now, however, thinks that an extraordinary
amount of modification, though large and long-
continued, implies that this has been within a
in'riod not excessively remote, "as species very
rarely endure for more than one geological period."
This statement is made to account for the "va-
riability" of one organ, as compared with "other
parts of the organization, which have remained
for a much longer period nearly constant."

Going onwards, Mr. D. states "that the most
abnormally-developed organs may be made con-
stant, I can see no reason to doubt." Thus,
"the wing of the bat having been transmitted,
in approximately the same condition to many
modified descendants, must have existed, according
to my theory, for an immense period in nearly
the same state."

Now I think it is impossible to conceive a
more unsatisfactory mode of arguing out a ques-
tion than this. Because the wing of the bar
does not vary and support Mr. D.'s theory,
therefore it is an abnormity.

This large family of most useful insectivorous
creatures, found in all parts of the world, and

TRANSMIT! ABLE. 123

in a great variety of forms, placed, as we have
seen, according to its organization, very high in
the scale of mammalia, is an abnormity — a monster
—something altogether unnatural, because it does
not support the doctrine of natural selection!

Having given us no proof of this variability,
in what he calls abnormal parts, and having
thus disposed of an objection which is clearly
fatal to his theory, Mr. Darwin very compla-
cently asks, How is this to be accounted for,
on the view of each species having been inde-
pendently created? Now, as I do not admit that
any part of organic structure in the whole world
is abnormal, but that everything is specially
adapted to its purpose by a wise Creator; and
as my faith has not been in the least shaken
by any of Mr. Darwin's arguments, or mode of
reasoning, I need riot of course take any notice
of a question which sufficiently answers itself.
Neither need I notice Mr. Darwin's remarks
about what he calls secondary sexual variability.
I proceed to his second proposition.

2nd. — Distinct species present analogous va-
riations; and a variety of one species often as-
sumes some of the characters of an allied species,
or reverts to some of the characters of an early
progenitor.

I do not see so much objection to this prop-
osition, as I do to the inference which Mr.
Darwin draws from it. And here I may make
a remark, which is applicable to almost all the
book. Mr. Darwin frequently illustrates the vari-

124 SPECIES NOT

ations of the same or assumed species to prove a
great theory, which he has raised, of the community
of origin of all species. In one case the fact of
the variation is admitted, as in the Swedish
and the common turnip; or the descendants
and varieties of the rock dove under domestica-
tion; to which may be added all our domestic
cattle and garden productions. In the other case
it is not only not admitted, but believed by
naturalists to be impossible.

Thus, Mr. Darwin talks of analogous variations
of the fancy pigeon, as breeding back to the rock
dove, their supposed ancestor. But this goes
no way to prove the supposition that an eairlc
and a pigeon had the same origin. And because
the ass has sometimes transverse bars on its
legs, like the zebra, or the dun horse the same
bars on its legs, or a double shoulder stripe on
its shoulder, is Mr. Darwin justified from this
in saying, as he does, that the zebra, the horse,
and the ass have had the same origin? Why
does he not adopt the much more probable theory,
that being members of the same genus, and having
their nutritive organs upon the same type, there
may be in each a tendency to a similar deposit of
pigment in similar structures. That it is highly
exceptional Mr. D. does not deny. But he may,
if he chooses, claim a common origin for the
zebra and the ass, which would at once account
for his exceptional cases of sporting back in the
latter. But then I meet him with the question,
Does the produce of the ass and the zebra breed?

TRANSMUTABLE. 125

If he says no, then I remark that this test is
held by observers to be a mark of distinctness
of species; but all experiments prove the fertil-
ity of crosses between the same species or their
varieties, the produce of the latter breeding
back.

While these sheets are passing through the
press, I observe the following pertinent remarks,
by an intelligent correspondent of "The Field,"
for July 14th. : — "Have any of your readers tried
to perpetuate a cross not between species but
varieties? If they have they will know that to
perpetuate to perfection is next to impossible.
Take, for instance, the first cross between a
short-horn and Alderney, and you will have an
animal that, in my opinion, combines the qualities
most desired by the dairymaid and the butcher.
Try and perpetuate that cross, and failure is
the result ; it being an established fact, that to
obtain a decent animal you must breed back with
one or other of the original stocks." Naturam
expelles furca, tarnen usque recurret!

Therefore, I say that experience and experiment,
and the observation of such men as Mr. Knight,
and a host of others, are utterly opposed to the
possibility of the ass and the zebra, and d fortiori
of the ass and the horse, being descended from
a common parent.

I write this with full knowledge of the facts
stated by Geoffrey St. Hilaire, and quoted further
on, because it is quite clear that that distin-
guished philosopher is opposed altogether to any

126 SPECIES NOT

deduction being drawn from the exceptional
cases, which he finds do occur to this rule, and
the same remark will apply to the views of
Agassiz.

Mr. Darwin says that to believe,- because the
hybrid of the ass and the hemionus is like a
Welsh pony, in having three shoulder stripes,
and even some zebra-like stripes on the sides of
the face, which are similar to the striped Kattywar
breed of horses — to believe, he says, that animals
were created with a tendency to vary thus,
"makes the works of God a mere mockery and
deception."- -(Page 167.)

But before I can be satisfied that Mr. Darwin's
theory is not a "mockery and deception," I must
have something much more like proof than lie
offers of his natural selection, and so-called parti al
and inconstant law of variation. And 1 must
demur to the inconsistency of adducing the fact,
(assuming it to be true,) that members of the
same family shew features similar to other mem-
bers specifically distinct, under peculiar circum-
stances, like those given above, to prove that they
were not specially created !

According to Mr. Darwin's theory, of a common
origin to all vertebrated animals, why should the
next group, the Ruminants, not run back to the
horse? or the elephant to the whale? or why
not be marked by some of the gaudy colourings
of the "bird, or the sparkling splendour of the
fish ? Or why should there not now arid then
be born an oviparous mammal from the ox, or

TRANSMUTABLE. 127

a gill-breathing fish from a flying squirrel?

How opposed also to sound induction is the
statement that an immense group, like that of
the mammalian, including forms so different, should
have had a common origin, and then illustrating
the idea by some resemblance between the mem-
bers of the smallest order of the class, containing
in fact but one family. Why not shew us a
sport back to the horse or the ass in the camel,
the elk, the giraffe, the antelope, the sheep,
goat, buffalo, or ox?

Absurd as these questions may appear, they
are justified by Mr. Darwin's views. "No doubt,"
he says, "it is a surprising fact that characters
should re-appear after having been lost for many,
perhaps for hundreds, of generations." — (Page
1GO.) But why if hundreds, not thousands?
Who but the hand that made and designed,
shall dare to limit? Mr. Darwin has not left
us in doubt upon this question. He says, at
page 161, uAs all species of the same genus are
supposed, on ray theory, to have descended from
a common parent, it might be expected that
they would occasionally vary in an analogous

manner."

But then, while we are forbidden to confess
our ignorance of the laws of special creation, or
the interpretation of the Divine mind, we are
told that "Our ignorance of the laws of variation
is profound. Not in one case out of a hundred
can we pretend to assign any reason why this
or that part differs, more or less, from the same

128 SPECIES NOT

part in the parents." — (Page 1G7.)

We now arrive at the sixth chapter, in which
Mr. Darwin meets many of the objections urged
in the preceding pages, under the head of "Dif-
ficulties on Theory." No one knows better than
Mr. Darwin, the many difficulties that beset his
path in endeavouring to establish a theory so
wild and improbable as that which he has ad-
vanced. It might be expected, therefore, that
he would here and there overhaul these objections,
and place them in as favourable a light as he
can for his case.

1. — The absence or rarity of transitional va-
rieties is the first difficulty which Mr. Darwin
deals with.

He answers it by bringing into play two of
the pillars of his theory, neither of which, in the
sense used by Mr. Darwin, have been proved.
He says that "extinction" and "natural selection"
going hand in hand, will, in "the very process
of formation and perfection of the new form,"
exterminate all the others. That they are not
found in a fossil state, he believes to be owing
to the "imperfection of the geological record."

What a crowd of objections rise to the mind
in reading these very unsatisfactory answers.
Let any naturalist look at whatever group he
chooses in the six great classes of organized
beings. Let him extend his examination to
the still greater divisions of orders, families,
genera, and species. In the enormous mass of
living things, he will find some imagined anomalies

TRANSMUTABLE. 129

for which he cannot account, some imperfections
which he cannot understand. He, for instance,
may think it an anomaly that the bat, which is
a mammal, should have wings ; but when he sees
it feeding at night upon those crepuscular and
nocturnal insects, which would otherwise prove
injurious to man, and when he further considers
that to fly, and see, and feed at night, must
require an organization and structure adapted to
a life during the day in holes and crannies, and
therefore a mammalian mode of propagation, in-
stead of an oviparous one, how changed becomes
the almost impious thought of such a structure
being an imperfection or anomaly in nature!
It would, in fact, require volumes to explain
what at first sight appear abnormal in living
beings. But how few are the real or apparent
anomalous forms, when compared with the great
mass of living beings, each adapted to its sphere
of life, and clearly designed for the position it
occupies in the scale of existence!

Look at any one order with the eye and
knowledge of a comparative anatomist, and observe
the unity of type in structure, yet with such a
difference in form, and habit, and mode of life.
Take, for instance, the carnivora. We shall
find a unity of type between the lion, the tiger
and the cat, and yet how different! This unity
is fainter between the hyaena and ichneumon, or
between the civet cat and the weasel, or the
latter and the badger or the bear. But where
are the transitional forms, — the evidences of

130 SPECIES NOT

that change, which must have occurred between
these families during the immensity of time they
were being modified into different species from
one form? Mr. Darwin says they have become
extinct in the "struggle for existence." Where
again, we ask, are the evidences of this — where
their remains? He answers, I cannot say; they
are lost in the "imperfection of the geological
record !"

Well satisfied with this explanation, Mr. Darwin
proceeds to answer another objection equally grave.
"In the intermediate region, having intermediate
conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-
linking intermediate varieties?" — (Page 174.)

Mr. Darwin gives up the attempted explanation,
by the supposition of our continents having been
islands in geological time, and thus centres of
distinct species, "without the possibility of inter-
mediate varieties existing in the intermediate

zones."

But I confess that I think the explanation
upon which he relies is infinitely less defensible.

It is given in language somewhat confused
and unintelligible, but is in substance; that
species exist now in a wide area, that they be-
come somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the
confines, and finally disappear. Hence there is
a narrow neutral territory between two represen-
tative species. This view is supported by the
authority of Alph de Candolle and Edward Forbes.
Mr. D. considers that this is not due to physical
causes alone, but that as one animal lives upon

TRANSMUTABLE. 131

another, there will be a tendency to diminution,
or even extinction. Therefore the range of species
will tend also to be sharply defined, and they will
become in the neutral territory rarer and rarer,
and so transitional varieties are lost.

But in order to uphold this view, Mr. Darwin
is obliged to have recourse to a deduction in-
consistent with his theory. He says that his
species are already defined objects, (however they
may have become so,) not blending one into
another by insensible gradations. This appears
to me nothing more or less than a surrender of
his doctrine in toto, and an adoption of that of
the author of the "Vestiges." It is the forms
between the primogenitor and its transmuted de-
scendant that we want as proof of Mr. Darwin's
theory, and these he cannot produce, and con-
sequently he places himself out of court.

The next difficulty which Mr, Darwin deals
with is —

2. — On the origin and transitions of organic
beings with peculiar habits and structure. This
leads to an answer of the very obvious question,
How could a "land carnivorous animal have been
converted into one with aquatic habits; for how
could the animal in its transitional state have
subsisted?"— (Page 179.)

Mr. Darwin answers this boldly, by stating
that "within the same group carnivorous animals
exist, having every intermediate grade between
truly aquatic and strictly terrestrial habits." He
instances the Mustela vis on of North America,

132 SPECIES NOT

which, though a polecat in form, has webbed
feet; diving during summer for fish, and living
in the winter like other polecats. He also cites
the family of squirrels, which shew a gradual
development of wide posterior bodies and full
skins on their flanks, up to the flying squirrel,
and also the flying lemur, in which, however,
there are no links connecting it with the other
Lemuridce. These, Mr. Darwin considers, have
been lost, but he can see no difficulty in ima-
gining how "the membrane connected fingers and
fore-arm of the Galeopithecus might be greatly
lengthened by natural selection; and this, as far
as the organs of flight are concerned, would
convert it into a bat."

In these surmises there is one thing which
must strike the reader as remarkable. Mr. Dar-
win admits that his "natural selection" can only
act for the good of the individual. It must, in
other words, be an advance in organization, so
as to give the changed species a superiority in
the "struggle for existence" with its weaker and
less fortunate brethren. But it will be remarked
that Mr. Darwin's instances of supposed trans-
mutation have a downward tendency in the scale
of organization.

What a difference is there in the position of
the polecat and the fish! Yet, because Provi-
dence has thought right to give the former
means of getting its food in water, when it was
scarce on land, Mr. Darwin thinks this may il-
lustrate the transition between the mammal and

TRANSMUTABLE. 133

the fish — a creature much below it in the scale,
and from which change it would be impossible
to conceive anything that could be gained for
the benefit of the mammal ! So with the squirrels.
Of course the nearer this animal approaches the
flying squirrel, the more it assumes the structure
of the bird — a creature much lower down in the
scale than itself! Mr. D. thinks that this might
be rendered necessary by the change of climate
and vegetation, introducing other competing ro-
dents, and thus driving a squirrel into the
"necessity" of having, in "myriads of years," a
pair of wings to enable it to escape from its
enemies. This reasoning sounds so much like
downright nonsense, that I must quote Mr. D.'s
own words. —

"But it cloes not follow from this fact that the
structure of each squirrel is the best, that it is
possible to conceive under all natural conditions.
Let the climate and vegetation change, and let
other competing rodents, or new beasts of prey,
immigrate, or old ones become modified, and all
analogy would lead us to believe that some at
least of the squirrels would decrease in numbers,
or become exterminated, unless they also became
modified in structure in a corresponding manner."
-(Pages 180-1.)

In the same way the so-called flying lemur
might, according to Mr. Darwin, be converted
into a bat, an animal which is lower down in
the scale; and of what benefit could this be to
the flying lemur? Its present power of gliding

134 SPECIES NOT

is quite sufficient to protect it from its enemies;
and mark ! there is no act of flying, properly so-
called, performed by either the flying lemur, the
flying squirrel, or the flying fish. The function
is that of gliding through the air, which is done
in the fish by the aid of a developed pectoral
fin; in the lemur and squirrel by means of a
membrane between the fore legs and hind ones,
by which they can glide through the air, and
thus protected by design, escape from their ene-
mies. But the organs by which these gliding
motions are performed, are not even homologous
with the wings of the bird, and therefore not
even framed on the same type! Yet with this
knowledge Mr. Darwin argues, at page 182, that
"it is conceivable that flying fish, which now glide
through the air, slightly turning by* the aid of
their fluttering fins, might have been modified
into perfectly-winged animals." Unfortunately for
Mr. Darwin, man is a reasoning animal, and his
reason depends on his power of comparison.
Therefore, if he does not give us a wing with
which to compare his membrane in the fish or
squirrel, we cannot come to the same conclusion
as he does, that his fish could ever be converted
into a bird, much less into the more highly or-
ganized bat, with its warm blood, lungs, four-
partite heart, and viviparous re-production, all of
which changes must have been going on at the
same time as that in the fin ! The fact is, the
flying fish, squirrel, opposum, or lemur, never strike
the air with their membranous expansions. These

TRANSMUTABLE. 135

are merely adaptive organs, quite different from
wings, and therefore the Galeopitliecus, or flying
lemur, has by all modern classifiers been separated
from the bats, and placed with the lemurs.

SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER VIII.

DIVERSIFIED habit next engages Mr. Darwin's
attention. He expresses his opinion in the fol-
lowing extraordinary passage: — "But it is diffi-
cult to tell, and immaterial for us, whether habits
generally change first, and structure afterwards;
or whether slight modifications of structure lead
to changed habits; both probably often change
almost simultaneously." — (Page 183.)

In what Mr. Darwin calls "diversified and
changed habits," he is singularly unfortunate. A
British insect is made to feed upon exotic plants
— nothing certainly wonderful, considering the
general similarity of all vegetable tissues; a tyrant
flycatcher hovers like a kestrel at one time, and
at another dives like a kingfisher.

Nuttall gives a very different explanation of
this diving: — "Occasionally he (the tyrant fly-
catcher) is seen hovering over the field with
beating wing, almost like a hawk, surveying the
ground for grasshoppers, which are a favourite
diet. At other times they may be observed in
small companies, flickering over still waters in
the same employment — the gratification of appetite.
Xow and then, during the heat of summer, they
are seen to dip and bathe in the watery mirror,
and with this washing, drying, and pluming, they
appear to be both gratified and amused." — (Manual,
vol. i., p. 269.)

TRANSMUTABLE. 137

Our old friend Parus major, or large tomtit,
is accused of killing birds, — a statement which,
with all deference, 1 beg to say I do not believe.
That he will crack a yew-seed, or a haw-stone,
I know full well, because I have often seen him.
But what of that? He knows there is a kernel
inside, and that cracking it by repeated knocks
with his beak, which was given him for the
purpose, will open it and secure the prize!

But the next illustration of diversified action
nearly took away my breath. In North America
bears are sometimes seen swimming on the sur-
face of the water with their mouths open catching
insects. Ergo ! says Mr. Darwin, "if there were
always plenty of insects, I can see no difficulty
in a race of bears being rendered by natural
selection more and more aquatic in their structure
and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till
a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale !"

This certainly beats any whale story I ever
heard.

The next instance of diversified habit which
Mr. D. thinks favours his view, is that of North
American woodpeckers, which feed on fruit, others
which chase insects, and one which is found
on the plains of La Plata, where no tree grows,
and of course it never climbs one. Mr. Darwin
does not mention the species, nor whether its
feet were like those of other woodpeckers. Our
common green woodpecker, which is formed like
the rest of its family, with peculiar feet for
climbing trees, and a long tongue, which it in-

138 SPECIES NOT

serts into holes and chinks for the larvae of insects,
may, nevertheless, be frequently seen feeding on
the ground. Why should not a woodpecker in
America wander away from the forests, and do
likewise? Then again we are told that there
are upland geese, with webbed feet, that rarely
or never go near water. Now the word 'rarely'
is a saving clause, and may be said equally of
our domestic geese, which are seen feeding on
some common from morning to night, and as
rarely going into water.

If civilization takes away our swamps without
destroying our water-hens or land-rails, why should
not the former abide by the rivers and ponds,
and the latter seek drains and ditches as a sub-
stitute? According to Mr. Darwin's theory, the
character of the wading legs in those birds ought
to be altering. — Is it so? Certainly not! Mr.
Darwin says that nobody but Audubon has ever
seen the frigate-bird, a partially web-footed bird,
alight on the surface of the water. But Nuttall,
an equally good observer, says they frequently slim
the surface of the sea, or plunge into it after
fish, in both of which operations, there can be no
doubt, their webs are of the greatest use, and the
exceptional case mentioned by Audubon, proves
that they do sometimes, though rarely, alight on
its surface. Their destiny is not, however, either
swimming or diving, and many birds have their
toes more or less connected with membrane, as
the goshawk, which the frigate-bird may be con-
sidered to represent among aquatic birds.

TRANSMUTABLE. 139

The next heading of Mr. Darwin, on the
"Difficulties on Theory," is —

3. — Organs of extreme perfection and compli-
cation. The eye naturally comes under notice
first, for, as Mr. Darwin candidly observes, to
suppose that it could be formed "by natural
selection, appears absurd in the highest degree."

He does not, however, flinch from a bold effort
to solve the difficulty, for he says further on,
under the inspiration of the natural selection
doctrine, that the difficulty, though "insuperable
by our imagination, can hardly be considered
real ;" and it is illustrated by the following state-
ment:— "How a nerve conies to be sensitive to
light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself
first originated; but I may remark that several
facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve
may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to
those coarser vibrations of the air, which produce
sound"

But what does Mr. Darwin mean by light?
th'ere is all the difference in the world between
the objective light of the physicist and the sub-
jective light of the physiologist. The latter, which
is the consciousness of the former, is what con-
cerns us more especially in dealing with the eye.
If the retina were spread out on the face, a sheet
of light might be perceived, but no objects. But
suppose an arrangement of lenses, so arranged as
to converge these rays to a point, and all the
pencils of a body to corresponding points, we have
a picture of the object on that point, from which

140 SPECIES NOT

impressions proceed to the brain, and there produce
consciousness. What, therefore, has the fact, (if
shewn to be true,) of a sensitive nerve being
made sensitive to light to do with the organ of
vision? The eye-ball is an optical instrument,
as well as a light-seeing organ; and the whole
mechanism is so beautiful, that one almost trembles
with delight in recognizing there the unmistakable
evidence of Creative Wisdom and Design.

That retina, of which every one must have
heard something, what is it? Let the general
reader imagine a vast collection of structures,
each in itself complete, and only capable of re-
ceiving a single pencil of light after it has passed
through a series of lenses. These structures or
areas, as they have been described by Professor
Goodsir, from the recollection of whose invaluable
oral instructions I am now quoting, are each
separately formed of 1st., what is called the limiting
or most internal membrane; 2nd., fibres of optic
nerve; 3rd., layers of poly-clonic nerve-cells; 4th.,
an internal granular layer ; 5th., an external gra-
nular layer; 6th., a beautiful rod and cone, forming
part of what is termed Jacob's membrane. Now
of areas so formed, the retina contains a number
beyond all calculation, each being acted upon by
a single ray. All the operations of vision are
mechanically produced by this wonderful apparatus
when the ray reaches the optic nerve, except one,
and that the most important, namely, consciousness.
The optic nerve conveys the optical operations to
the brain, and there produces — in fact, vision.

TRANSMUTABLE. 141

Now this is the apparatus by which sight is
produced, in forms differing according to the con-
dition of the being in the scale of animated ex-
istence, in all to whom the faculty is given.
But the apparatus and the amount of sight vary
strictly according to the position of the animal
in the scale of life. And this variation is so
great, and in each case so admirably adapted to
the peculiar conditions of life, in which the animal
exists, that I consider it an insuperable answer
to Mr. Darwin's theory; and such is evidently
Mr. D.'s own opinion, though anxious to throw
the difficulty on imagination rather than on fact.
Now then for one or two facts.

Mr. Darwin says, "Among existing vertebrata
we find but a small amount of gradation in the
structure of the eye, and from fossil species we
can learn nothing on this subject."

I can hardly believe that this passage was
penned with a knowledge of what two such high
authorities as Owen and Buckland have written
upon the subject. But it is certainly a familiar
fact to geologists that the condition of the eye
of the Trilobite is well shewn in its fossil con-
dition; and in spite of Mr. Darwin's assumption
of a pre-silurian world, I must take the liberty of
considering the Trilobite one of the first of created
things.

"In the class Crustacea," says Professor Owen,
we find a most extensive- and interesting series
of gradations leading from the sessile median
eye speck to two distinct eyes, provided with all

142 SPECIES NOT

the essential optical apparatus, and placed upon
moveable peduncles. Ocelli or stomatu are com-
bined with compound eyes in the same species
in certain Entomostracans, as apus and limuliis.
A transparent speck of the integument forms the
cornea of the ocellus, immediately behind which
there is a spherical crystalline body in contact
with a gelatinous or vitreous humour, upon which
the extremity of the optic nerve expands ; a layer
of dark pigmentum covers all these parts, with

the exception of the cornea." uln the Trilobites

the cornea presents the same sub-divided surfun-
as in the limulus ; and the position of the two
eyes agrees with that of the corresponding com-
pound pair in the large existing Entomostracan.
In the Asaphas caudatus, (a Trilobite,) the cornea
is divided into at least four hundred compartments,
each supporting a circular prominence ; its general
form is that of the frustum of a cone incomplete
towards the middle of the head, but commanding
so much of the horizon in other directions, that
where the distinct vision of one eye ceases, thut
of the other begins" — (Lectures on the Inverte-
brata, p. 174-5. 1843.)

Professor Owen, after finishing his description,
then quotes from Dr. Buckland, the following
striking and convincing remarks: —

The eyes of the Trilobites of the transition
rocks, and those of their nearest congeners, the
fossil limuli, from the carboniferous series, "give
information," says Dr. Buckland, "regarding the
condition of the ancient sea and ancient atmos-

TRANSMUTABLE. 143

phere, and the relations of both these media* to
light, at the remote period when the earliest
marine animals were furnished with instruments
of vision, in which the minute optical adaptations
were the same that impart the perception of light
to crustaceans, now living at the bottom of the
sea.

With respect to the waters wherein the Trilobites
maintained their existence throughout the entire
period of the transition formation, we conclude
that they could not have been that imaginary
turbid and chaotic fluid, from the precipitates of
which some geologists have supposed the materials
of the surface of the earth to be derived ; because
the structure of the eyes of these animals is such,
that any kind of fluid, in which they could have
been settled at the bottom, must have been
pure and transparent enough to allow the passage
of light to organs of vision, the nature of which
is so fully disclosed by the state of perfection in
which they are preserved. With regard to the
atmosphere, also, we infer that had it differed
materially from its actual condition, it might have
so far affected the rays of light, that a corres-
ponding difference from the eyes of existing
crustaceans, would " have been found in the organs
on which the impressions of such rays were then
received.

Regarding light itself, also, we learn from the
resemblance of these most ancient organizations
to existing eyes, that the mutual relations of
light to the eye, and of the eye to light, were

144 SPECIES NOT

the* same at the time when crustaceans, endowed
with the faculty of vision, were first placed at
the bottom of the primeval seas, as at the present
moment.

Thus we find among the earliest organic re-
mains an optical instrument of most curious con-
struction, adapted to produce vision of a peculiar
kind, in the then existing representatives of one
great class in the articulated division of the
animal kingdom. We do not find this instrument
passing onwards, as it were, through a series of
experimental changes from more simple into more
complex forms; it was created at the very first,
in the fulness of perfect adaptation to the uses
and condition of the class of creatures to which
this kind of eye has ever been, and is still,
appropriate."

Mr. Darwin tells us, "from fossil species we can
learn nothing." Two of the most distinguished
paleontologists and comparative anatomists of the
present age tell us that the highest known animal
in the oldest geological stratum, in the daun.
in fact, of Creation, possessed an eye precisely
similar in every respect to animals of the same
class living in our seas. Not in a class which
has become nearly extinct by' -the "struggle for
existence," but one which out-numbers by myriads
every animal living out of water put together!
If "natural selection" has modified the eye of the
crustacean into one of a higher grade, surely,
according to Mr. Darwin's theory, the less favoured
original species ought to be disappearing from the

TIIANSMUTABLE. 145

waters of the earth ! Is it so ? On the contrary,
though exposed to a "struggle for existence" of a
most devastating kind, forming, as they do, the
natural food of thousands of stronger and superior
forms to themselves, there they exist more nu-
merous than ever, and live and die as they did
millions of years ago ! Why, if we had asked
about the transitional forms, U0h !" would have
been Mr. Darwin's answer, uthey, the weakest,
have gone to the wall, and become extinct."
Your evidence? — "That is lost in the imperfection
of the geological record !"

No, it is a mistake to talk about the degraded
condition of an organ, or to consider uan optic
nerve merely coated with pigment, and without
any other mechanism" as a transitional condition,
which it must be if Mr. Darwin's theory is true.
Every eye, from the black speck on the Poly gastric
animalcule up to the eye of man, is perfect in
itself; and nothing can illustrate better what
seems so difficult for Mr. Darwin to understand
by special creation, why organs as well as beings
should have been formed on the same type, then
a glance at the various forms of eye which are
adapted to the different species of the animal.
They are on the same type, because the same
object is obtained in each by the same means. An
animal lives in water, and its eye is formed to
allow for the refraction of light. Another animal
living in water has a limited range of existence,
and its light is limited accordingly. In birds
the sight is more acute and distinct than even

146 SPECIES NOT

in quadrupeds. Nuttall states that a sparrow-
hawk will see a lark at twenty times the distance
that such an object could be seen by man. A
kite will descend from a height beyond our range
of vision, straight down upon a lizard, field-mouse,
or bird; and with this prodigious range of vision
the bird can make its eye assume the precise form
suited to light and distance, the organ thus an-
swering the purpose of a self-adjusting telescope,
with a shade for examining the most luminous
and dazzling objects ; and hence the eagle is often
seen to ascend to the higher regions of the at-
mosphere, gazing on the unclouded sun as on an
ordinary and familiar object." — (Man. Introd.,
p. 5.)

If again, as Nuttall points out, nature had left
them as short-sighted as we are, giving them at
the same time the great agility and strength
which they possess, their latent powers would have
availed them nothing. "We may then in general
consider the celerity with which an animal moves,
as a just indication of the perfection of its

vision."

And what do we really see? Why not that
the more perfectly organized quadruped — the strong
in the struggle for existence has the most perfect
eye — but the bird, whose necessities require a
more exquisite and lengthened vision, has that
organ given it by the Creator in the form best
adapted to its existence! And are AVC to believe
that this is done by special creation, or by the
operation of .an unknown la, w, acting, we know

TRANSMUTABLE. 147

not how, now by one means, now by another—
here by chance, there by brute force? a law,
which is not even constant in its operation, formed
upon a doctrine without a shadow of probability
in its favour, unsupported by proof, and not even
recommending itself to the rnind by the plausi-
bility it might, if true, have derived from com-
parative anatomy, the known laws of physiology,
or the records of geology.

Mr. Darwin says, "If it could be demonstrated
that any complex organ existed, which could not
possibly have been formed by numerous successive
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down."

This is an unfair way of putting the question,
because to the Creator nothing is impossible. You
may take the speck on the eye of the Poly gastric
animalcule, and add to and modify it as you will,
but no human mind could convert it, even in
imagination, into the human or eagle's eye — the
hand of Him who first formed could alone fashion
it again.

Take the eye of an insect, which is, according
to the size of the creature, larger and more com-
plicated than that of any other animal. Look
at the dragon-fly, with its twenty-four thousand
eyes, all beautifully arranged in the two convex
masses every one is familiar with. Is not this
a distinct and perfect organization, permitting
the insect to fly backwards and forwards at will,
and to seize upon its prey like a hawk? How
by any stretch of imagination could this be con-

148 SPECIES NOT

verted into the eye of the bird or the quadruped?

Look again at the hexagonal corneules into
which the transparent covering of the compound
eyes is divided; — in the ant we see fifty, in the
house-fly four thousand, in the butterfly seventeen
thousand, in the mordella beetle twenty-five thou-
sand!— (Owen.) In each of these divisions there
is a separate lens, and to each there is sent a
twig of the optic nerve, "at once separating and
connecting together the component ocelli of the
compound eye."

Now how is this beautiful organ produced by
''natural selection?" It is only given to the per-
fect insect which lives a few hours, days, or
weeks. The caterpillar from which the insect was
developed, has but a single, simple eye, because
its life is for the most part stationary on a leaf
or branch, and it requires no more sight than
this single eye gives it. But the perfect insect
has to fly with rapidity, and it is necessary that
. it should see distant objects, and it is therefore
provided with a compound eye! Apterous, or
wingless insects, are positively blind, uas the
Claviger; and the blindness is often peculiar to
the female sex, as in the glow-worm and cochineal
insect!" — (Owen.)

Let us now look for a moment at the eye as
specially adapted to fishes. First there is no
lachrymal gland, because there is fluid to lubricate
the cornea. Mr. Darwin will say this has become
extinct from disuse. The cornea is flat, and is
thus less liable to injury in the rapid movements

TRAXSMUTABLE. 149

of the fish. The diminution of the anterior cham-
ber, and therefore of the aqueous humour, by the
flatness, is compensated by a greater convexity
and refractive power of the crystalline lens, and
to allow for the deviation from the spherical form,
and the consequent weakening of the power to
resist external pressure, the sclerotic capsule is
cartilaginous or bony.

Well may Owen exclaim, "This beautiful chain
of adjustments and inter-dependencies cannot but
raise the rightly-constituted mind to the contem-
plation of the attributes of Creative Intelligence,
herein so strikingly displayed." — (Lectures, vol.
ii., p. 207.)

ho

SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER IX.

THE electric organs of fishes is another stumbling
block in Mr. Darwin's thorny and intricate path ;
bur, as he has admitted that "it is impossible to
conceive by what steps these wondrous organs
have been produced/' I accept the admission, and
go on at once to—

4. — Organs of little importance. Under this
head we have some curious speculations.

The tail of the giraffe looks, says Mr. Darwin,
like an artificially-constructed fly-flapper, and
naturally enough he thinks it incredible that this
could "have been adapted for its present purpose
by successive slight modifications, each better and
better, for so trifling an object as driving awnv
flies." But he requests us not to be too quick
in our judgment, for we know that organs, now
of trifling importance, may have been of great
consequence to an early progenitor, and having
been slowly perfected, then transmitted down to
these days; "and," continues Mr. Darwin, "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 turn
quickly enough!" — (Page 196.)

TRANSMUTABLE. 151

I do not think I need say one word " in refu-
tation of an hypothesis, which I might simply
designate profane, but I will leave the matter to
the cool reflection of those who may read a state-
ment which shocks and outrages every proper
feeling, as much as it does violence to our reason
and common sense.

Instead, however, of answering that which suf-
ficiently answers itself, I will relate here a beautiful
instance of adaptation, which much puzzled natu-
ralists until they found out the reason ; and I
will take the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Darwin
that this is a very good instance of the uncer-
tainty of forming an opinion upon external
appearances alone.

Had the following instance of apparently ano-
malous or abnormal structure not had its uses,
shewn by observing the habits of the animal in
confinement, it would doubtless have gone into
the list of organs undergoing modification and
variation, in due time to be converted by "natural
selection" into the perfectly-formed constituent of
a new species. —

The aye-aye is a small lemur, not much larger
than a mouse, which inhabits the island of Mada-
gascar exclusively. It is very curiously organized,
having bat-like ears, and teeth like a beaver;
but the peculiarity we have now to do with is
that of the second finger of the hands, which is
described as unlike anything but a monstrous
supernumarary digit, being slender and long, half
the thickness of the other fingers, and resembling

l.">:> SPECIES NOT

:i piece of bent -wire. Now this is certainly a
curious combination of structure; on the whole
it is most like a lemur, and seems to be just
between the latter and the true monkeys — a good
instance of transition one would have thought!
That anomalous-looking wiry-finger gives hope
of an apt illustration of the toe of the rodent
being converted by modification and natural se-
lection, into the highest class of mammals but
one, the quadrumana. And in fact, if there is
anything in Mr. Darwin's theory, it is by some
road of this kind that our transmutation from
the inferior classes of animals has been brought
about. This aye-aye is a rare animal, and but
few specimens have found their way to this
country, and little was known of its habits. The
animal is held in great veneration by the in-
habitants, who have a firm belief that if they
touch it they will die within the, year. The
Honourable Dr. Sandwith, our Colonial Secretary
at the Mauritius, fortunately overcame this pre-
judice of the natives by an all-invincible i'H>
note, and the consequence has been an extremely
interesting communication from this gentleman
to Professor Owen, which is published in the
Proceedings of the Linnean Society for July,
1859, and which quite clears up the apparent
anomaly of the finger.

"Now," says Dr. Sandwith, "as he attacked
every night the wood- work of his cage, which 1
\\as gradually lining with tin, I bethought myself
of tying some sticks over the wood-work, so that

TRANSMUTABLE. 15o

he might gnaw these instead. I had previously
put in some large branches for him to climb
upon ; but the others were straight sticks to cover
over the wood-work of his cage, which alone he
attacked. It so happened that the thick sticks
I now put into his cage, were bored in all directions
by a large and destructive grub, called here the
moutouk. Just at sun-set the aye-aye crept from
under his blanket, yawned, stretched, and betook
himself to his tree, where his movements are lively
and graceful, though by no means so quick as
those of a squirrel.

Presently he came to one of the worm-eaten
branches, which he began to examine most at-
tentively; and bending forward his ears, and
applying his nose close to the bark, he rapidly
tapped the surface with the curious second digit,
as a woodpecker taps a tree, though with much
less noise, from time to time inserting the end
of the slender finger into the worm-holes, as a
surgeon would a probe. At length he came to
a part of the branch which evidently gave out
an interesting sound, for he began to tear it
with his strong teeth. He rapidly stripped off
the bark, cut into the wood, and exposed the
nest of a grub, which he daintily picked out of
its bed with the slender tapping finger, and con-
veyed the luscious morsel to his mouth.

I watched these proceedings with intense interest,
and was much struck with the marvellous adap-
tation of the creature to its habits, shewn by
his acute hearing, which enables him aptly to

154 SPECIES NOT

distinguish the different tones emitted from the
wood by his gentle tapping; his evidently acute
sense of smell aiding him in his search; his secure
footsteps on the slender brandies, to which he
firmly clung by his quadrumanous members; his
strong rodent teeth enabling him to tear through
the wood; and lastly, by the curious slender
finger, unlike that of any other animal, and which
he used alternately as a pleximeter, a probe, and
a scoop.

But I was yet to learn another peculiarity. I
gave him water to drink in a saucer, on which
he stretched out a hand, dipped a finger into it,
and drew it obliquely through his open mouth ;
and this he did so rapidly that the water seemed
to flow into his mouth. After awhile he lapped
like a cat; but his first mode of drinking appeared
to me to be his way of reaching water in the
deep clefts of trees."

Now can anything in nature be more beautiful
as an illustration of design than this exceedingly
interesting statement of Dr. Sand with. A small
creature is destined to live in a country, the
trees of whose luxuriant vegetation afford food t<»
the lemurs, one of the quadrumanous family. Om-
member of this family, the little aye-aye, is de-
signed more particularly to feed upon the de-
structive larvae of insects which bore into the trees.
And to find this food it is provided with a
series of organs which are typical of families in-
sectivorous, or gnawing, and with an intelligence
to apply these organs equal to the higher mam-

IRAN SMUT ABLE. 155

malia. It taps with its delicate, apparently ab-
normal, wire-like finger, just as a doctor taps his
patient's chest — it, in fact, percusses the tree !
By its acute bat-like ears it is able to hear any
difference in the sound between the solid wood
and the hollow gallery of the grub, Its intelli-
gence tells it at once here is "game." It now
brings into play its "rodent" teeth, and gnaws
down to its quarry ; then it inserts its long
"abnormal" finger, it "prehends" its food arid
eats it.

Now, I say unhesitatingly that these several
acts shew a pre-determined design, and a special
adaptation in the Designer to several distinct
ends, for which purpose HE chooses from the
types of the animal form, the means which are
best calculated for His purpose. According to
Mr. Darwin's theory, some squirrel, "arrested in
development at an early period," varied, and was
born a small wreckling. Unable to get nuts
like its race, it inserted one of its claws into
the holes of trees after grubs. This finger con-
sequently grew longer than the others, and the
young squirrel now lived upon grubs. A race of
these young grubbers were of course established,
and then came a great fight for grubs. Those
which heard the best got more food, and their
ears grew; the duller hearing ones dying off in
the struggle for existence. Madagascar being cut
off from the rest of the world, the new animal
became an inhabitant thereof, and continuing to
vary, other lemurs were formed by "divergence,"

15() SPECIES NOT

some retaining, and some losing, their rodent
character; while others, as may be seen, varv
still more, and have bat-like membranes stretching
between their hind and fore legs, constituting the
Galeopithecus, or flying lemur, and so on.

Now all this would be very ingenious and
clever. It, unfortunately, has neither proof nor
probability to recommend it, inasmuch as the
organs, which would be supposed to be thus trans-
formed by the necessities of the animal, are highly
complex, and as unchangeable as is gold into silver.
Hearing and intelligence are not acquirable bv
variation. They depend upon an acoustic instru-
ment, perfect in each animal in itself, and upon
a brain, the four great types of which, as shewn
by Owen, are fixed and immutable structures.

Mr. Darwin objects to the protest of naturalists,
who "believe that very many structures have been
created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for
mere variety." This doctrine, if true, would,
Mr. D. says, be absolutely fatal to his theory, but
he asserts at the same time that many structures
are of no direct use to their possessors! and his
argument why the above would be fatal, is that
the "chief part of the organization of every being
is simply due to inheritance; and consequently,
though each being assuredly is well fitted for its
place in nature, many structures have now no
direct relation to the habits of life of each species."
-(Page 199.)

This strangest of doctrines is supported by still
stranger arguments.

TRANSMUTABLE. 157

"Thus we can hardly believe that webbed feet
of the upland goose, or of the frigate-bird, are
of special use to these birds; we cannot think
that the same bones in the arm of the monkey,
in the fore-leg of the horse, in the icing of the
bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special
use to these animals!" — (Page 200.^)

Will Mr. Darwin kindly inform me first upon
what grounds he calls these bones the same.
Secondly, I should like to know if he can shew
me any structure more perfect than the limbs he
has alluded to, or any other means by which the
functions they perform could be more perfectly or
beautifully executed. If he cannot, why should
not the same great plan be adopted to perform a
similar function in each ? No special use ! Shades
of Payley and Bell, why do you not rise and point
to the masterly arguments which you have left
in language, which for force and truth, has never
been excelled ! No special use in the bones of the
horse's fore-leg, because they are formed on the
same type as the arm of the bat, or the mon-
key! Why what is the use of bones? One
would almost be justified in supposing that Mr.
Darwin was ignorant of the use of the skeleton.
Could he attach those exquisite muscles which
move the arm of the monkey to anything but
bone? Could he have given support, or elas-
ticity in motion, or freedom of action, to the
horse, without every bone in its fore-legs? Could
he have attached the web of the bat's wing
without bones? or could the seal have got along

158 SPECIES NOT

in the sea without its flipper? Shew me a
single bone that is useless in these structures!
The very idea amounts to an absurdity, only
equalled by the supposition that follows, that
"the several bones in the limbs of the monkey,
horse, and bat, which have been inherited from
a common progenitor, were formerly of more use
to that progenitor, or its progenitors, than they
are now to these animals, having such widely
diversified habits!" and that "we may believe
that the progenitors of the seal had not a flipper,
but a foot with five toes, fitted for walking or
grasping ! ! !"

I must here again quote Professor Owen :—
"In the survey which I have taken in the present
course of Lectures of the genesis, succession, geo-
graphical distribution, affinities, and osteology of
the mammalian class, if I have succeeded in
demonstrating the perfect adaptation of each va-
rying form to the exigencies, and habits, and
well-being of the species, I have fulfilled one
object which I had in view, namely, to set forth
the beneficence and intelligence of the Creative
Power.

If I have been able to demonstrate a uniform
plan pervading the osteological structure of so
many diversified animated beings, I must have
enforced, were that necessary, as strong a con-
viction of the unity of the Creative Cause.

If in all the striking changes of form and
proportion which have passed under review, we
could discern only the results of minor modifica-

TRANSMUTABLE. 15D

tions of the same few osseous elements, surely we
must be the more strikingly impressed with the
wisdom and power of that cause, which could
produce so much variety, and at the same time
such perfect adaptations and endowments out of
means so simple.

For in what have those mechanical instruments,
the hands of the ape, the hoofs of the horse, the
fins of the whale, the trowels of the mole, the
wings of the bat, so variously formed to obey the
behests of volition in denizens of different elements
—in what, I say, have they differed from the
artificial instruments which we ourselves plan with
foresight and calculation for analogous uses, save
in their greater complexity, in their perfection,
and in the unity and simplicity of the elements,
which are modified to constitute these several
locomotive organs?

Everywhere in organic nature we see the
means not only subservient to the end, but that
end accomplished by the simplest means. Hence
we are compelled to regard the Great Cause of
all, not like certain philosophic ancients, as a
uniform and quiescent mind, as an all-pervading
anima mundi, but as an active and anticipating
intelligence." — (Classification of Mammalia, p. 62.)

The next issue opened by Mr. Darwin is one
also upon which I must call upon him to plead
guilty, and resign his theory.

"If it could be proved that any part of the
structure of any one species had been formed for
the exclusive good of another species, it would

160 SPECIES NOT

annihilate my theory, for such could not have
been produced through natural selection." — (Page
201.)

To a person helieving such a doctrine as that
of natural selection, it is very difficult to put a
case, for he has so many ways of wriggling out of
the difficulty, that the chances are against you.
If instead of one organ. I prove that <tU
the organs of an animal have been formed for
the good of another, I may be met by the re-
joinder—the terms of my proposition are not
complied with. But I still contend that if the
argument is good for one, it must, a fortiori, be
good for all. Mr. Darwin must admit that
there are animals in vast numbers who live upon
peculiar kinds of food, and nothing else. If they
had not this food they would die. The carnivora,
for instance, live entirely upon the bodies of other
animals, to catch which they are provided with
adequate means, to eat which they are provided
with a special masticatory apparatus, and to digest
which their organs are peculiarly formed. Now
it would be impossible to argue that it is for
the good of an animal that it should be destroyed
and eaten by others. Yet, according to Mr.
Darwin's theory, these animals must have been
altered and modified from the form of their an-
cestors by "natural selection." Every modification
of their structure which would have given them
a better means of escape, would have acted inju-
riously, even to the extermination of the dominant
species which fed upon them. And yet it would

TRANSMUTABLE. 161

be necessary that these animals should have some
means of eluding their enemies, and also that
they should be endowed with great powers of re-
production, or else those destined to feed upon
them would become exterminated.

Here Mr. Darwin's theory obviously fails,
while the truth of special creation stands out
with unassailable force. Let us look for a
moment at our oxen, sheep, and pigs. As a
rule those animals are slaughtered throughout
the world, and only exceptionally die a natural
. death. That this is essential to the life of man,
no one but a vegetarian would doubt for a
moment. His teeth and digestive organs are
formed for feeding upon a mixed diet, of animal
and vegetable structure. Now it could not be
for the good of the ox, or the sheep, or the pig,
that it should be so altered from the form of
its ancestor, as to become essential to the life of
man, and therefore should always die a violent and
often a cruel death! Had natural selection so
altered the forms of these animals that they
could not have been eaten by man, and therefore
escaped the knife of the butcher ; then man himself
could not have existed, which, I think, is
bringing Mr. Darwin's argument to a reductio
ad absurdam.

But, as vegetarians may have a voice in the
matter, what of those animals, and they are a
vast number, included in the great order Car-
nivora, — lions, tigers, lynxes, ounces, wolves,
foxes, hysenas, civets, ichneumons, weasels, bears,

162 SPECIES NOT

badgers, etc.? The animals which these beu.-ts
live upon must have been formed by special
creation for their exclusive use. Natural selection
could not have done it according to Mr. Darwin's
own shewing.

Then, again, there is the horse. According to
Mr. Darwin it is a transmuted tapir. But
when for the benefit of the animal, did that
part of the structure of the tapir become altered
by "natural selection" for the good of the horse?
It gave it, say, increased swiftness, removed a
proboscis-like nose, added a tail, took away
from each upper jaw one molar tooth, enclosed
its toes in a hoof, doubled its height, and
converted its tough, thick, rhinoceros-like hide,
into the soft, hairy, moveable skin of the horse.
But where was the good of all this to the tapir?
At present it roams about its natural forests,
feeding like the wild boar, bathing in the mire
like a rhinoceros; and, although it is occasionally
attacked by the jaguar, it lives, no doubt, a
life of average happiness, and is the father of
many families. What good to the animal, then,
did "natural selection" do, by converting it
into a horse, which is the slave and servant
of man? Doomed to a life of labour, often to
cruelty, and almost always to a violent death;
for whose good was the change made? Surely
not for the animal, but for man. If a hackney
cab-horse were to speak in a cold winter's day
in London, could we not imagine that he would
express a wish that he were a tapir, wild

TRANSMUTABLE. 163

and free in the woods of South America?

But the supposition that any particular organ
should be created for the especial use of another
animal is an absurdity. Such a notion is totally
opposed to the plan and order of creation in
which every animal is organized, to meet its
own requirements, and not those of other animals.
This plan, as far as we can understand it, is
to adapt the organization and structure of living
beings to their mode of existence; and as most
animals eat, drink, breathe, walk, circulate their
blood, etc., in a manner somewhat similar, so
the organs given them to perform these several
functions are formed upon the same plan, — the
same end is produced by a similar means, and
not as Mr. Darwin contends, by an accidental
alteration or variation of structure adapting itself
to new functions.

Although I have only gone through half Mr.
Darwin's volume, I think I have touched upon
all the principal elements of his theory. There
are, however, some important points still to come
under our notice. Instinct claims for Mr. Darwin
a separate chapter, for he has to overcome two
great difficulties, — the cell of the hive bee, and
the slave-making ants. Of course he has a fling
at the stereotyped difficulty — a definition of
instinct. He would gladly have defined it as
hereditary habit, had not the above two cases
stared him in the face. Habit is too often
mistaken for instinct, and it would have suited
Mr. Darwin very well to have made them iden-

164 SPECIES NOT

tical, inasmuch as habits are acquired and
hereditary. Instincts are hereditary, but not
acquired. "Mr. D. says a young pointer which
points at birds without being taught, displays
an hereditary acquired instinct. I say he shews
an hereditary acquired habit. And so with the
greyhounds, the bulldogs, the tumblers, which he
presses into his service. Hunting hares is not
an instinct, — courage in a bulldog, and tumbling
in pigeons are not instincts, they are acquired
habits; so the fear of young pheasants for dogs
is an acquired habit, which would be lost under
domestication. But the building of its nest by
the bird, or its house by the beaver, are purely
instinctive, and not to be acquired.

Mr. Darwin says that the act of the cuckoo
in laying its eggs in another bird's nest is
"instinct," (page 176,) which might have been
acquired from the "habit" of one of its progen-
itors, of laying now and then an egg in another
bird's nest; that the young so reared would
inherit the habit, and so we should have pro-
duced, by "natural selection" the "instinct" of
the European cuckoo! I merely remark that
habits and instincts, being totally different, are
not convertible. What is the operation of feeding
the cuckoo's young by the foster parent? Surely
instinctive? You could never convert it into a
habit. Why does a cuckoo which never saw a
nest, lay its egg in a nest? Surely from instinct.
Why in the nest of another bird? Mr. Darwin
says from an "instinct" acquired from a "habit,"

TRANSMUTABLE. 165

which is altogether opposed to the evident and
clear distinction between the two mental opera-
tions.

Mr. Darwin gives a most interesting account
of his own observations upon the "slave-making
instinct" of ants, for which I must refer to the
book. His observations were principally confined
to two species, Formica sanguinea and rufescens.
The latter are entirely dependant on their slaves.
The former possess few slaves, and the masters
determine the migrations, and carry the slaves.
Mr. Darwin conceives that this may have origi-
nated in the habit of ants, not slave-makers,
carrying off the pupa3 of other species. If the
progeny of these pupse, not eateji, should turn
out useful, if it were more advantageous to
capture than to procreate species, then Mr. Darwin
thinks natural selection might turn the habit
of stealing pupse into that of slave-making.
When this habit became an instinct, then it
might be modified, so as to suit the case of
F. sanguinea in the one case, or that of F.
rufescens in the other extreme.

As I do not believe in Mr. Darwin's theory,
I do not see the difficulty which, as he says,
this case of slave-making throws in his way. I
am content to believe that the economy of the
ant is fixed by the same unerring wisdom that
caused it to exist, and Mr. Darwin's explanation
of slave-making neither tells for or against the
view I hold.

With regard to the cell-making of the bee,

166 SPECIES NOT .

Mr. Darwin attempts to upset the fact of the
original hexagonal form of the cell, according
to the modern doctrine that the cell becomes
hexagonal by pressure; a case which is, in my
opinion, so far from being made out, that I
think every argument, particularly the observa-
tion of Mr. Smith, that single cells are some-
times hexagonal, is against such a mode of
explanation.

Neuter insects is another difficulty which Mr.
Darwin says he at first thought insuperable,
and ''actually fatal to my whole theory. " The
working neuter ant, for instance, is totally
different from its parents. Correlation is the
agent which Mr. Darwin considers gets him out
of his dilemma, for he can see no real difficulty
in any character having become correlated with
the sterile condition of certain members of insect
communities. But the real difficulty, he says,
is to understand how such correlated modifications
could have been slowly accumulated by natural
selection. This is got over by assuming that
natural selection may be applied to the family,
as well as to the individual. Thus, because it
might have been found that a sterile condition
of certain members of the community has been
advantageous to the community, — ergo, the fertile
members of that community flourished, and
transmitted to their fertile offspring, a tendency
to produce sterile members!

But the climax of Mr. Darwin's difficulties
arises when he finds among the neuters of different

TRANSMUTABLE. 167

ants, individuals differing not only from the fertile
ones, but from themselves, and that in a remark-
able degree, and that they do not graduate into
each other, but are well-defined. Some carry
shields on their heads, others have differently-
developed jaws; one caste never leaves the nest,
being fed by the workers of another caste!

All these difficulties Mr. Darwin gets over by
a series of assumptions. He supposes, beginning
at the separation of the neuter from the fertile
species, that the variation did not all come
in the neuter at the same time, but only in a
few. Thus they would appear as he finds them
with a gradation of form, which is the fact,
according to his researches; and he ultimately
comes to the conclusion that "natural selection,
by acting on the fertile parents, could form a
species which should regularly produce neuters,
either all of large size, with one form of jaw,
or all of small size, with jaws having a widely
different structure; or, lastly, and this is our
climax of difficulty, one set of workers of one
size and structure, and simultaneously another
set of workers of a different size and structure
— a graduated series having been first formed,
as in the case of the driver ant; and then the
extreme forms, from being the most useful to
the community, having been produced in greater
and greater numbers, through the natural selec-
tion of the parents which generated them ; until
none with an intermediate structure were pro-
duced."—(Page 241.)

168 SPECIES NOT

Having thus, as he conceives, made out his
case, Mr. Darwin indulges in the following strain
of triumph: — "The case is also very interesting,
as it proves that with animals, as with plants,
any amount of modification in structure can be
effected by the accumulation of numerous slight,
and, as we must call them, ACCIDENTAL VARIATIONS,
which are in any manner profitable, without
exercise or habit having come into play."

It appears to me that Mr. Darwin has misin-
terpreted the fact that the castes of slaves in
the driver ant from North America are very
different from, and yet insensibly grade into each
other. He draws from this the singular infer-
ence in the last quotation but one. But tlir
question is simply, are these different forms pro-
duced as such by the ant, or are they modified
by food, and other treatment, just as the suspended
fecundity of the worker bee is re-established In-
feeding the larva with royal bread. It would be
altogether contrary to every known fact in re-
production, to suppose that these varieties could
be formed in any other way. In fact it may
be laid down as an impossibility that any animal
should produce a series of young which should
differ as the castes of these slaves are said to do.
Therefore the operation is one purely of instinct
on the part of the worker antS, and Mr. Darwin's
hypothesis falls to the ground.

The singular light which has of late years been
thrown upon the law of reproduction, by the facts
of what is termed Parthenogenesis, may help to

TRANSMUTABLE. 169

explain much of what appears difficult in these
slave ants. But we want to know a great deal
more about the economy of the Hymenoptera.
One day we are told by Siebold, that the queen
bee can produce eggs which will become drones
without sexual intercourse. The next we are
told by Mr. Stone, in the "Zoologist," that the so-
called neuter bees do lay fertile eggs. We cannot
draw conclusions of high scientific import from a
class, which, though the most interesting, is not
it appears, even in the present day, thoroughly
understood. Yon Siebold's observations have never
been confirmed, and it is not difficult to imagine
there may be here a source of fallacy.

Nothing I think can better illustrate the ex-
treme degree of infatuation with which Mr. Darwin
has become imbued with his "natural selection'7
theory, than when he states it was necessary for
him to comprehend why the thrush in South
America lined its nest with mud, as ours does,
or why the male wrens of North America should
build "cock nests" to roost in, like the ukitty
wren" of our own school-days in England!

But why, I may ask, is the song thrush the
only one of the family that lines its nest with
mud? The missel thrush, the fieldfare, the black-
bird, ring ouzel, and the redwing, all what Mr.
Darwin would call varieties of the same species,
do use mud in the construction of their nest, but
not in its lining; while the golden oriole and
dipper do not use it at all. Surely the building
of a nest by a bird is purely instinctive. It

170 SPECIES NOT

would be the height of absurdity to suppose that
an "acquired habit" could make the goldfinch,
the fan-tail warbler, the long- tailed tit, or any
other bird in fact, construct a nest in every par-
ticular the same as the species has done since
the creation, from other power than that of
a beautifully-adapted instinct. And so clearly
the song thrush of the old world and the new,
though belonging to a fauna essentially distinct,
have been created, and endowed, with the same
instinct, although it would be as absurd in us
to assume a knowledge of the reason, as it would
be to explain why the goldfinch and the redpole
should build nests so totally different. Each
member of the thrush family, as well as that of
every other bird, forms its nest from the power
of an instinct it cannot resist, just as the caged
nightingale obeys the inherited instinct of migra-
tion, by flying about its cage all night. But the
most admirable part of the nest-building of birds,
is their constant uniformity. They are always
made alike. If the birds were insensibly being
modified by natural selection, their nests ought
to be changing also, to meet their anticipated
new condition.

Is there no foresight in natural selection? If
not, what on earth is the power or force which
elumges the body, but leaves the instincts un-
touched? If there is foresight, why then should
we not see some evidence of it in the operations
of the changing instinct?

Mr. Darwin considers that the larva1 <>f it-linen-

TRANSMUTABLE. 171

monidae feeding within the live body of caterpillars,
is not an instance of created instinct, but a
consequence of one general law leading to the
advancement of all organic beings, and to the
dreadful, unnatural, and untrue result, "Multiply,
vary, let the strongest live, and the weakest die.'7

Did the man that could express such an idea
as this ever see "the storm tempered to the shorn
lamb?" Did he ever look at a drop of water,
and see there myriads upon myriads of simple
monads, whose only existence can be shewn by
the highest powers of the microscope, as minute,
hardly visible specks ; but living there in manifest
enjoyment, though surrounded by thousands of
other "stronger forms than themselves?"

Did he ever see the gentle ephemera emerge
from its chrysalis, spread its gossamer wings to
the sun, live its allotted half-hour upon earth,
and then die?

Did he ever see the brilliant beetle, all decked
in green and gold, opening its wing-cases in the
summer sun, but the moment a footstep was
heard, falling to the ground, to all appearances then
only a small mass of the clod on which it laid?

Did he ever look at the wonderful structure
of even the least, and most perishable of living
things, and see there the Hand which gives to
one a shell, to another a coat of mail, to another
a sting, and to another the colour of the tree,
or the rock, or the heather, on which it lived.

Did he ever contemplate nature, and the pro-
tection thrown by its Maker upon the smallest

172 SPECIES NOT

thing that lives, and then enunciate the dreadful
canon of "natural selection," which says, "let the
strongest live and the weakest die."

Did he ever in fact contemplate nature as the
work of Him, without whose knowledge "not a
sparrow falleth to the ground!" who has made
everything with a beauty and perfection no
finite mind can comprehend, but who has shewn
in all living things, whether man, with his com-
plex organization, or the blade of grass, which
springs up in the field, or the flower that grows
upon the rock, — a perfect adaptation of structure
to circumstances of life, which to all time will
proclaim in a voice, that no bungling speculator
can ever drown, "Oh Lord, how manifold are Thy
works; in wisdom Thou hast made them all!"

With regard to the larva of the ichneumon
living upon the body of the caterpillar, no better
instance of Creative Design could be adduced.
Many of my readers may perhaps have never
seen or read this history, and I will therefore
detail it as observed frequently by my friend
Dr. Maclean. —

The insect Sphex sabulosus is one of those
large ichneumon flies, with long pointed bodies
and gaily-coloured wings, which may be seen run-
ning about the leaves of plants and trees in the
hot summer. The members of the family generally
do this for the purpose of finding a caterpillar,
into which they insert their ovipositor, and de-
posit an egg; the whole process is done in an
instant, and the unhappy caterpillar shews at first

TRANSMUTABLE. 173

signs of pain, but quickly recovers, and feeds as
usual. The egg deposited with unerring instinct,
in due time produces a larva, which feeds upon
that part of the caterpillar not immediately ne-
cessary to its life. When the ichneumon larva
is full-fed, the caterpillar forms its pupa, but the
resulting fly is an ichneumon, not a moth. The
species, however, under consideration, the Sphex
sabulosus, adopts a different method, and one
still more characteristic of the peculiar instinct
of the species. It first digs a hole in a dry
bank a day before, or sometimes on the same
day, on which it requires it. It then lays a stone,
and two or three clods of earth, over the hole,
and starts oft" for a caterpillar, which it has pre-
viously rendered insensible, but not killed. It
will carry this caterpillar ten or even twenty
yards. Taking hold of it by one end, half the
caterpillar will project in front of the Sphex* s
head, and the other is pressed against its body,
and so held as to allow the use of the insect's
legs. When it arrives at the hole it will quietly
lay down its burden, and remove the stone and
clods of earth. It then drags the caterpillar into
it, going in first itself, and then it deposits in its
side— not an egg, but a larva with a barbed
mouth, which is plunged into the flesh of the
caterpillar, and of course, from the nature of the
barb, the mouth cannot be withdrawn. The Sphere
now fills up the hole with small particles of earth,
generally placing a small stone or part of an
oyster shell over the top. The parasite thus left

174 SPECIES NOT

in the body of the caterpillar, now feeds upon
its juices, and the latter lives long enough to
give nourishment to its murderer, until it is full
grown. It then dies, and the parasite becomes
a pupa, from which the perfect- winged Sphex
emerges the following spring.

Now the whole of these facts, noticed by a good
and practised observer like Dr. Maclean, may be
fully relied upon. Mr. Darwin would say this is
not an instance of created instinct, but a conse-
quence of a general law leading to the advancement
of all organic beings, which law he exemplifies in
the words, "Multiply, vary, let the strongest live,
and the weakest perish."

But I ask, why does the Sphex dig a hole?
AVhy is it endowed with the power of paralyzing
the caterpillar? Why does it drag it to the hole,
and then deposit within it its larva? Surely if
these operations are not instinctive, there is no
meaning in the word. Every step in the process
is done with methodical precision, and with an
evident foresight which can result from nothing
but a faculty given to the insect by its Maker,
for the purpose of perpetuating its species, and
destroying a creature which was feeding upon
vegetable productions necessary for the use of
man, or some other animal. The Sphex never
sees its progeny; it cannot, therefore, be the
result of a habit inherited, for this would im-
ply a knowledge, which it is clear the insect
never had, and never could have. It can only
be explained as an act of creative design.

TRANSMUTABLE, 175

While on the subject of insects, I will detail
some interesting points in the economy of two
of our most beautiful butterflies, namely, the
White Admiral, and the Purple Emperor. For
these particulars, not hitherto published, I am also
indebted to my friend Dr. Maclean, who has been
a close and accurate observer of the habits of
insects, and who has not only shewn me most
of what follows, but has kindly allowed me to
make use of his notes. In the whole field of
nature there is nothing more beautiful or exciting
to an entomologist than a sight of these two
magnificent butterflies, gliding along the views
of a wood, or over the tops of the highest oak
trees, in a hot summer's day. They are closely
allied in form and habit, so much so, as to have
been classed by many naturalists in the same
family ; but they differ essentially in their economy
and larvae.

The white admiral, (Limenitis sibylla,) deposits
its egg, (which is in shape something like a
modern sea-urchin, and covered with angular
plates,) in the month of July, on the upper sur-
face of the leaves of the common honey-suckle, in
the thick high-slop of the woods; only one egg
on each leaf. In about a fortnight the eggs
hatch, and the young caterpillar commences life
on its own account. It invariably crawls to the
distal end of the leaf, and very carefully avoids
the midrib, feeding upon the soft portions on each
side. Now every botanist knows that the honey-
suckle is deciduous, and casts off its leaves in

176 SPECIES NOT

autumn. Our young caterpillar, without any in-
struction from its mother, who dies before it is
born, knows all this as well as we do, for when
it has eaten the leaf half way, it begins to pre-
pare for the future. First of all knowing that
the leaf will fall off, it spins a silken thread,
by which it is securely attached to the stem.
It now folds up the remainder of the leaf, in-
closing itself in a very comfortable hammock,
which, when the leaf, in the course of nature,
drops off, swings to and fro, like a sailor's cot
in a gale of wind. But it is very secure, for
the silken cord is elastic, and not easily de-
tached, while being of the same colour as the
stem of the honey-suckle, it is very difficult to
observe, and the most experienced larva-hunter
will find it hard work to make it out until he
is shewn it once.

If you take a glass and look at the little cot,
you will probably see nothing but the said cot
closed in on all sides. Try another, and you will
find a little chink partly open, and there you
will see with wonder and delight a small reddish-
looking caterpillar, covered with spines, and coiled
up into a ball. Our friend is in his winter's
sleep, and is able in this condition to resist any
amount of frost or snow, wind, hail, or rain;
and so the dreary winter passes away.

With coming spring, however, fresh duties have
to be performed. The early warm sunshine makes
the bud, which the caterpillar knows as well as
we do, is situated in the axil of the old leaf-

TRANSMUTABLE. 177

stalk, to burst forth and grow; — and the same
warmth awakens the sleeper. During the months
of April and May it feeds. In June it goes into
a chrysalis, whence, early in July, it emerges a
large and beautiful butterfly !

"Child of the sun, pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff* fragrant nectar from their cups of gold."

And other eggs are laid, and then the beautiful
butterfly is seen no more on earth.

Now the whole of this year of the insect's
life is a circle of pre-ordained events, each of
which is essential to the existence and perpetu-
ation in time of the creature. Cut the links of
the chain, or leave one of them out, and then
the whole series of events is inevitably destroyed.

Next look for a moment at the noble emperor
of all the butterflies, glittering in his rich purple
robe as he sails along the tops of the forest oak.
What is his history? As I have riot in this in-
stance seen the changes detailed, I will quote Dr.
Maclean's own words : —

"July 16th., 1834. — I saw Apatura Iris de-
posit two eggs on two upper leaves of the sallow.
One, which I brought home with me, produced
a small green larva on the 25th. The other,
which was left in its natural situation, did not
hatch till the 28th. The larvae in the first in-
stance are without horns, having heads similar to
ordinary caterpillars, and of a dark brown colour.

178 SPECIES NOT

Eight days after birth they change their first
skin, and have now two horns, or fleshy prolon-
gations on the head, which are, however, at this
period much longer proportionally than they arc
afterwards. The colour is now green, like the
leaf of the sallow. One of these larva? died, but
the other continued to feed on the same leaf upon
which it was hatched, till the 15th. of November.
After feeding it always returned to rest on the
apex of the midrib, which was left untouched.
On the above day, however, it moved to the
axil of the leaf-stalk, and here it stretched itself
out at full length, with its horns porrected, appear-
ing as though it had taken up its winter quarters.
Previously to this time its attitude was sphingi-
form, or like that of the larva? of41 the puss moth.
On the 18th. it moved again, and attached itself
to a cloth covering a small cage, by which it
was surrounded, within half an inch of the leaf-
stalk, its former abode. On the 27th. the leaf
exfoliated, as did also that on which the other
egg had been laid. The previous night had
been colder (23° F.) than any night during the
autumn. The larvae now enclosed itself in a web,
but it unfortunately died during the winter."

The rest of the history however is well known,
as the larvae are found feeding on the sallow up
to the middle of June, when they change into
chrysalides, and emerge about the middle of July
in the imago form. The egg is totally diiferent
in shape from that of Sibylla, and is like one
of the fossil echinidoe found in the chalk, having

TRANSMUTABLE. 171)

longitudinal lines dividing it into spaces, similar
to the ambulacral plates of the echinus.

Now these histories are very suggestive in
reference to Mr. Darwin's views. We have two
insects very much like each other in form, struc-
ture, habit, arid markings. They may indeed
be adduced as species which, from their general
characters, might be assumed to have a common
origin. But nothing can be more opposed to such
a view than their history, as detailed above, in
the earlier periods of their lives. The eggs,
though laid at the same time, are different alto-
gether in shape and texture; the caterpillar pro-
duced by the one is green, horned, tapering at
the end, and without the last pair of pro-legs,
and it hybernates on the stem in a web. That
of the other is cylindrical, spiny, reddish brown
with white stripes, and it hybernates in a ham-
mock, made out of the remains of the leaf upon
which it had been feeding. What power, except
that of special creation, and designing pre-ordi-
nation, can for a moment be allowed as that by
which the wonderful instinctive faculties of these
creatures were produced? And yet such instances
of difference in habit could be adduced by hun-
dreds of thousands among insects alone.

The cases I have selected ought to have borne
some fruit for Mr. Darwin, whereas they tell
against him as strongly as facts can do. If
naturalists of the present day would go more into
the haunts and seclusions of animal life, and
study habits and instincts, instead of wasting

180 SPECIES NOT

their time in splitting hairs, about the distinctive
speciality of this or that form; or if, instead of
straining resemblances into analogies, and analo-
gies into homologies, they would study nature
more in the field, and less in the closet, we should
hear little said, or urged, or written, against the
special creation of organized beings.

On the subject of instinct, I cannot refrain
from quoting here the following passages from
Professor Goodsir's admirable and highly philoso-
phical address, delivered to the graduates in
medicine, in the University of Edinburgh, for
1859. These remarks have a general significance,
and a wide application to the question we are
now discussing: —

"A man is distinguished from all the other
organized beings, in the midst of which lie is
placed, by the comprehensiveness of the conditions
of his economy; he is also peculiar in the mode
in which he is able to provide for them. His
peculiarity consists not so much in the complexity
of his corporeal frame, as in the character and
sphere of his consciousness. The conscious prin-
ciple, if the expression may be so applied, of the
horse or dog, is influenced only by external cir-
cumstances; the sphere of its activity is, so to
speak, altogether external to itself, impressible
from without, and therefore in some sort conscious
of surrounding objects, it is altogether unconscious
of itself. The so-called mental powers of the
animal are capacities and faculties, excited only
by corresponding external objects, or by the re-

TRANSMUTABLE. 181

collection of these. Not endowed, therefore, with
independent powers, its acts are acts pre-deter-
mined for it, in the fundamental arrangement
of its entire economy, with a precision and to
an extent exactly commensurate with the con-
ditions of its existence and welfare. The animal
has consequently no field allotted to it for the.
exercise of judgment, and can, therefore, commit
no error, nor be responsible for any act."

"In our human economy, on the other hand,
we are not only conscious of the material objects
which surround us, but we have in addition a
consciousness even more vivid of our conscious
principle itself. We recognise in our economy,
moreover, not only certain capacities and facul-
ties, the proper ends, operations, and scope of
which are directly pre-determined and arranged,
as in the lower animals, for certain requirements;
but we are conscious, in addition, of beliefs, ca-
pacities, and faculties, the objects of which are
indicated, and their operations conditioned and
regulated by the laws of the conscious principle
itself. In virtue of the endowments of this his
higher principle, man is enabled to extend con-
tinuously his knowledge of the laws of external
nature, and his influence over her. From the
same source he derives his consciousness of the
law of duty, and of that liberty of action with
which it is .associated; hence also, through free
knowledge and moral liberty, the unassisted human
reason acquires the conviction of a supreme law-
giver." -(Edin: New Phil: Journal, Oct., 1859.)

182 SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER X.

THE next chapter is devoted to the considera-
tion of hybridism; and Mr. Darwin draws the
conclusion that there is no distinction between
varieties and species, because "forms known to
be varieties, or sufficiently alike to be considered
as varieties, and their mongrel offspring are very
generally, but not quite, universally fertile." I
shall content myself, in answer to this, by quoting
the remarks of the greatest known authority upon
the subject, M. Isidore Geoffry St. Hilaire, who,
in presenting the last volume of his great work,
"On the General Natural History of the Organic
Kingdoms," to the Academy of Sciences, in Paris,
took occasion to discuss this very subject; and
after stating that lie had arrived at opinions
intermediate between those of Haller, Bonnet,
Blumeubach, and Meckel on the one side, and
of Morton on the other, finishes thus : — "The
conclusion at which I have arrived is the following :
-There are a great number of hybrids sterile,
and also a great number imperfectly fertile. But
there are others which fully partake of the power
of reproduction, either with original species or
among themselves. What has been called the
principle of Buffon, but which was in reality that
of Pliny, (for Buffon, after having admitted it,
condemned it three several times as a foolish

TRANSMUTABLE. 183

prejudice,) must disappear from science, where it
lias so long been pre-eminent, constituting, as it
does, with several other propositions not less
contestable, what the partizans of the fixity of
species consider as the classical doctrine upon
hybrids. But in throwing aside this principle,
we must be very careful how we substitute for it
the contrary principle ; for if it is not certain
that hybrids are generally or imperfectly fertile,
still less can ice sustain that they are generally
calculated (aptes) to re-produce themselves. In
reality there is not here a fixed principle, but
only facts to ascertain, (constater,) and these facts
are very variable according to the species which
are under consideration" — (Kevue et Magazin de
Zoologie, January, 1860, p. 40.)

Now let me ask in all seriousness, if, according
to this result of the labours of perhaps the
greatest living authority upon the subject of
hybridism, any one is justified in inferring there-
from the identity of species and variation, and
from thence drawing a deduction in support of
a generalization of much greater magnitude and
importance?

M. I. Geoifry St. Hilaire's experiments were
performed between animals of the same family as
the dog and the wolf, and the dog and the
jackal, and yet he cautions us, in unmistakable
language, not to apply the principle to the general
fertility of hybrids. Mr. Darwin, however, makes
it one of the chief pillars of his doctrine, and
is obliged to give it force by assuming that there

184 SPECIES NOT

is a universal law of nature applicable to the
subject. Thus we see how easily the ground is
cut away from beneath his feet.

What the facts are which we are to have in
the promised great work, is, of course, problem-
atical. They cannot, however, in my opinion
alter the position in which he stands, inasmuch
as he has clearly put forth his strength in the
book before us, and that I believe is po\verlrss
to make his case even plausible.

The ninth and tenth chapters treat of the
imperfection of the geological record and geological
succession. I have before alluded to these sub-
jects, and to do them justice would require much
greater space than I can command. The whole
question, however, is so well put by a conv<-
pondent of Archbishop VH lately, an eminent sci-
entific man, in a letter published in the "Spec-
tator," for March 24th., 1860, that I shall take
the liberty of making an extract from it. —

UI proceed now to notice the manner in which
Darwin tries to fit his principles to the facts of
geology.

I will take it for granted that the knonn
series of fossil-bearing rocks, or deposits, may In-
divided into the palaeozoic, the mesozoic, the ter-
tiary or neozoic, and the modern, the fens, deltas,
etc., etc., with the spoils of the actual flora and
fauna of the world, and with wrecks of the works
of man.

To begin then with the palaeozoic rocks. Surely
we ought on the transmutation theory, to find

TRANSMUTABLE. 185

near their base great deposits with none but the
lowest forms of organic life. I know of no such
deposits. Owen contends that life began with
the infusorial forms. They are at any rate well
fitted for fossil preparation ; but we do not find
them. Neither do we find beds exclusively of
hard corals and other humble organisms, which
ought, on the theory, to mark a period of vast
duration while the primaeval monads were working
up into the higher types of life. Our evidence
is, no doubt, very scanty ; but let not pur op-
ponents dare to say that it makes for them. So
far as it is positive, it seems to me point-blank
against them. As we ascend in the great stages
of the paleozoic series, (through Cambrian, silu-
riari, Devonian, and carboniferous rocks,) we have
in each a characteristic fauna; we have no wa-
vering of species — we have the noblest cephalopods
and brachiopods that ever existed ; and they pre-
serve their typical forms till they disappear.
And a few of the types have endured, with
specific modifications, through all succeeding ages
of the earth. It is during these old periods that
we have some of the noblest icthic forms that
ever were created. The same may be said, I
think, of the carboniferous flora. As a whole,
indeed, it is lower than the living flora of our
own period ; but many of the old types were
grander, and of higher organization than the cor-
responding families of the living flora; and there
is no wavering, no wanting of organic definition,
in the old type.. We have some land reptiles

186 SPECIES NOT

(batrachian) in the higher palaeozoic periods, hut
not of a very low type; and the reptiles of the
penman groups, (at the very top of the palaeo-
zoic rocks,) are of a high type. If all this be
true, (and I think it is,) it gives but a sturdy
grist for the transmutation-mill, and may soon
break its cogs.

We know the complicated organic phenomena
of the mesozoic (or oolitic) period. It defies the
trunsmutationist at every step. 'Oh! but the
document,' says Darwin, 'is a fragment. I will
interpolate long periods to account for all the
changes/ I say, in reply, if you deny my con-
clusion, grounded on positive evidence, I toss
back your conclusions, derived from negative
evidence — the inflated cushion on which you try
to bolster up the defects of your hypothesis. The
reptile fauna of the mesozoic period is the gramlor
and highest that has lived. How came they all
to die off, or to degenerate? And how came the
dinosaures to disappear from the face of nature,
and leave no descendants like themselves, or of
a corresponding nobility? Did they tire of the
hind, and become whales, casting oiF their hind-
legs! And, after they had lasted millions of
years as whales, did they tire of the water, and
leap out again as pachyderms? I have heard of
both hypotheses; and I cannot put them in
words without falling into terms of mockery.
This I do affirm, that if the transmutation
theory were proved true in the actual world,
and we could hatch rats out of the eggs of

TRANSMUTABLE. 187

geese, it would still be difficult to account for
the successive forms of organic life in the old
world. They appear to me to give the lie to
the theory at every turn of the pages of Dame
Nature's old book.

And now for a few words upon Darwin's long
interpolated periods of geological ages. He has
an eternity of past time to draw upon; and I
am willing to give him ample measure; only let
him use it logically, and in some probable ac-
cordance with facts and phenomena.

I place the theory against facts viewed col-
lectively. 1st. — I see no proofs of enormous gaps
of geological time, (I say nothing of years or
centuries,) in those cases where there is a sudden
change in the ancient fauna and flora. 1 am
willing, out of the stock of past time, to lavish
millions or billions upon each epoch, if thereby
we can gain rational results from the operation
of true causes. But time and 'natural selection'
can do nothing if there be not a vera causa
working in them. [Note — see remark on 'Time,'
in the 'Annotations on Bacon's Essays.'] I must
confine myself to a few of the collective instances.

2nd. — Towards the end of the carboniferous
perioc],, there was a vast extinction of animal and
vegetable life. We can, I think, account for this
extinction mechanically. The old crust was broken
up. The sea bottom underwent a great change.
The old flora and fauna went out; a new flora
and fauna appeared, in the ground now called
Permian, at the base of the new red sandstone,

188 SPECIES NOT

which overlie the carboniferous. I take the fact
as it is, and I have no difficulty. The time in
which all this was brought about may have been
very long, even upon a geological scale of time.
But where do the intervening and connecting
types exist, which are to mark the work of
natural selection? We do not find them. There-
fore the step onwards gives no true resting-place
to a baseless theory ; and is, in fact, a stumbling-
block in its way.

3rd. — Before we rise through the new red
sandstone, we find the muschel-kalk (wanting in
Knidand, though its place on the scale is well-
known,) with an entirely new fauna : where have
\\c a proof of any enormous lapse of geological
time to account for the change? We have no
proof in the deposits themselves: the presumption
they offer to our senses is of a contrary kind.

4th. — If we rise from the muschel-kalk to tin;
lias, we find again a new fauna. All the anterior
species are gone; yet the passage through the
upper members of the new red sandstone to the
lias is by insensible gradation, and it is no easy
matter to fix the physical line of their demar-
cation. I think it would be a very rash assertion
to affirm that a great interval took place between
the formation of the upper part of the new red
sandstone and the lias. Physical evidence is
against it. To support a baseless theory, Darwin
would require a countless lapse of ages, of which
we have no commensurate physical monuments;
and he is unable to supply any of the connecting

TRANSMUTABLE. 18(J

organic links that ought to bind together the
older fauna with that of the lias.

I need hardly go on any further with these
objections. But I cannot conclude without ex-
pressing my detestation of the theory, because of
its unflinching materialism ; —because it has de-
serted the inductive track, the only track that
leads to physical truth; — because it utterly re-
pudiates final causes, and thereby indicates a
demoralized understanding on the part of its ad-
vocates. In some rare instances it shews a
wonderful credulity. Darwin seems to believe
that a white bear, by being confined to the slops
floating in the polar basin, might be turned into
a whale; that a lemur might easily be turned
into a bat; that a three-toed tapir might be the
great grandfather of a horse ! or the progeny of
a horse may (in America) have gone back to
the tapir.

But any startling and (supposed) novel paradox,
maintained very boldly, and with something of
imposing plausibility, produces, in some minds, a
kind of pleasing excitement, which pre-disposes
them in its favour; and if they are unused to
careful reflection, and averse to the labour of
accurate investigation, they will be likely to con-
clude that what is (apparently) original, must
be a production of original genius, arid that
anything very much opposed to prevailing notions
must be a grand discovery, — in short, that what-
ever comes from 'the bottom of a well' must be
the 'truth' supposed to be hidden there."

190 SPECIES NOT

In Professor Owen's recent work on the "Fossil
Mammalia," this part of the subject is handled
in the same masterly manner, as the relations of
living species is in that from which I have already
quoted so freely. The evidence which lie collects
and contrasts with the greatest care, all tells in
the strongest manner against Mr. Darwin's doc-
trine : —

"Organic remains, traced from their curliest
known graves, are succeeded one series by another
to the present period, and never re-appear A\
once lost sight of in the ascending search. Afl
well might we expect a living ichthyosaur in the
Pacific as a fossil whale in the lias, the rule
governs as strongly in thev retrospect as the pros-
pect. And not only as respects the vertebra tn,
but the sum of the animal species at each suc-
cessive geological period, has been distinct and
peculiar to such period"

But the extinction which we observe in the
geological periods was no where sudden. Life
Mvins to have been extinguished by a law which
we cannot understand, but one totally opposed
to that which would have obtained, had Mr.
Darwin's theory been true. Thus, as we have
>een, the geological history does not speak of the
destruction of the weak by the strong. What
have become of the great bat-like animal, the
pterodactyle, and the huge saurians, whose images
have been so well restored for us by Mr. Hawkins,
at the Crystal Palace? "\Vhat has become of the
mammoth, or elephant, considerably larger than

TRANSMUTABLE. 191

either of the two species now existing? Or of
the dinornis of New Zealand, a bird standing ten
feet and a half high, whose bones are as large
again as those of the ostrich, and whose egg was
ten inches long, and seven in diameter? They
are extinct, — blotted out from the face of the
earth for ever. While the apteryx, the most
aberrant of all birds, without either wings or
tail, still lives to prove that the weakest do not
always go to the wall. But the above extinct
animals lived in their own time in all the luxu-
riance of a Provident Nature. They served the
purpose for which they were created, and their
remains now attest the Power that created and
extinguished.

The same rule is observed in the invertebrate
class. .Where do we see anything now living in
our seas like the ammonites, as large as cart-
wheels, which are found in our oolitic strata?
or the l]uge nautili, or ostreae ? Certainly they
give no evidence of the "struggle for existence,"
and the "natural selection" of the strongest and
most dominant species.

The two chapters, eleven and twelve, upon
geographical distribution, are the best examples
in the book of special pleading, or the art of
turning facts to suit a particular theory, assumed
to be true. The distinctness of the several faunas
throughout the world, more particularly of India
and Australia, and of the latter, from every other
country; and the great mass of proof afforded
by the living things in each quarter of the globe,

1J)2 SPECIES NOT

and in much more confined areas than tin M .
would, one have supposed, have been all-sufficient
to satisfy the most sceptical doubter of the truth
of special creation. Not so Mr. Darwin. With
the most labouring and incessant hammering,
he knocks his favourite theory through every
difficulty. Nothing stops him. The ignis fat mix
which he has created, goes on dancing its flick-
ering existence through the sloughs and marshes
which have swallowed it up a hundred times
before. He answers the difficulties of geographical
distribution thus: —

1st. — We are to make due allowance for our
ignorance of all the changes of climate and land-
levels, which have occurred during the recent
period. 2nd. — We are profoundly ignorant with
respect to the many and curious means of occa-
sional transport. 3rd. — A species may have ranged
continuously over a wide area, and then have
become extinct in the intermediate tracts.

When these three things are taken into account
—two expressions of profound ignorance and one
of excessive doubt — uthe difficulties in believing
that all the individuals of the same species,
irhe/'(:irr located, have descended from the same
parents, are not insuperable." — (Page 407.)

Then he goes a step further.—

"Make the same allowances for our ignorances,
.and remember that some forms of life change
most slowly, enormous periods of time being thus
granted for their migration, and I do not think
the difficulties are insuperable, to account how,

TRANSMUTABLE. 193

on my theory, distinct species of the same genus
must have spread from one parent source."

And thus he thinks are to be explained all
the leading facts of geographical distribution-
migration — localization of genera — sub-genera —
species — why the inhabitants of South America,
in the mountains and plains, are linked together
and to extinct beings — why oceanic islands should
have few inhabitants — why whole groups of or-
ganisms, as batrachians and terrestrial mammals,
should be absent from oceanic islands, whilst iso-
lated islands possess their species — why the in-
habitants of an archipelago should be closely
related, and to those of the nearest continent —
why in two areas, however distant, there should
be a correlation in the presence of identical
species— of varieties — of doubtful species, and of
distinct but representative species.

A tolerable long list of explanations, which we
are told, by reason of two categories of ignorance
and a doubt, to add as support to the theory of
natural selection ! !

Upon the subject of geographical distribution
of species, I will make one or two remarks and
extracts from the works of eminent men. And
first as to Plants.

The number of species of plants throughout
the world is estimated by Meyen at two hundred
thousand.

"If we now look over this immense variety of
plants, we shall find that nature, under similar
conditions of climate, has always produced similar,

19'4 SPECIES NOT

often even the same forms. The naturalists,
Banks and Solander, as well as the two Forstns
who accompanied Cook in his voyages round
the world, and Sparmann, were not a little sur-
prised when they found, in the region of Capo
Horn, a vegetation similar to that of our northern
zone. If we examine the vegetation of the
plains, from the extreme north to the torrid
zone, we shall find, as we change the latitude,
a continual change in the physiognomy of the
vegetation; and if, in the torrid zone, we ascend
from the level of the sea to the top of the
highest mountains, which there often rise above
the limit of perpetual snow, we shall find
again the same order of changes more or less
clearly defined. There in a short time we pass
through climates corresponding to those of burn-
ing Africa, of the fair lands of the south of
Europe, and of frozen Spitzbergen; and as the
climate changes with the increasing elevation,
so also does the vegetation. The majestic palm
and the fruitful banana are not found above
the height of seven or eight thousand feet; but
near the limit of perpetual snow on these moun-
tains we meet with grasses, cyperaceoe, gentians,
mid other plants similar to the forms of northern
Europe." — (On the Geography of Plants, trans-
lated by Ray Society, pages 4-5.)

In commenting upon these facts, M. Meyen very
justly observes that some of the causes of this
distribution of plants are open to our observation ;
as, for example, when a plant from a hot country

TRANSMUTABLE. 195

is supplied with hot-house heat, and grows equally
well in ours, we have found out why it will
grow exclusively in hot countries; or if we take
marsh plants from their natural situation, and
plant them in our gardens, we see that they
flourish only when planted where nature intended
them to grow; or, again, plants which live in
the shade naturally, will only grow in similar
situations in our gardens. So far for the causes;
but the laws which regulate these causes are
inexplicable, as well as those by which different
groups of plants predominate in different regions,
or are confined within limited areas.

If I may venture to make a suggestion,
however, it is, that to the effects of localization,
climate, moisture, etc., we must add that of the
soil. Why do monkeys only live in the region
of palms ? Simply because the palms are necessary
for their subsistence. The Creator has specialized
the distribution of the animal to the climate
which produces the food upon which it lives.
So with plants, which have a different character
at the same altitudes, and temperature, in different
parts of the world; the same relation subsists
between the plant and the soil, as does between
the palm and the monkey.

According to Mr. Darwin's theory, two different
plants growing in the same altitudes and tem-
peratures in different parts of the world, is a
proof of the varying descendants of species by
inheritance. I believe it is simply an adaptation
of the thing which grows to the elements ne-

196 SPECIES NOT

cessary for its growth — the soil, temperature,
moisture, and light. Assuming the truth, also,
of special centres of creation, it by no means
follows that Mr. Darwin's views, as to the effect
of barriers upon migration, should be the real
cause of the difference between the faunae of two
countries, as South and Central America, or the
western and eastern shores of the Pacific. If it
were so, how are we to account for such facts
as the following? — "Indeed I am inclined to
believe that there are very few South American
birds, except in the more widely-diffused accipitres,
grallrc, and anseres, which are really to be met
with in Mexico and Central America." — (Sclater,
in Proceedings of Zoological Society, Part 1, 1859,
page 45.) Here are no barriers, for the land
is continuous between one country and another.
But this difference of species on different parts
of the world, is by no means universal. Pro-
fessor Asa Gray has recently pointed out, in a
paper read before the American Scientific Asso-
ciation, on the similarity of the plants of north-
eastern Asia and those of the eastern portion of
North America, that, "In many cases, there is
not only similarity, but even identity of species."
Among instances of identity he mentions gentian,
noble-bush, poison ivy, cranberry, and others,
which are of the same species on both conti-
nents, and it is probable that further researches
will disclose additional instances. Even where
there is a difference in species, there is generally
a remarkable similarity in many of the genera

TRANSMUTABLE. 197

on the two continents." — (Ed. New Phil. Jour-
nal, Oct., 1859, page 299.)

It is this similarity between genera and species
which has induced Dr. Hooker to make extensive
enquiries into the affinities of plants, the result
of which is the adoption of Mr. Darwin's views,
at all events in part, by that distinguished
botanist.

But I think that it will be readily admitted
that the analogy between plants and animals,
so far as this great question of the origin of
species is concerned, cannot be sustained. Plants
must be subject to the continued effects of
crossing, under circumstances to which the ani-
mal is not exposed. The conscious principle of
the animal, and the instincts implanted in it
by nature, must protect, and does protect it
from the anomalies which we see effected in the
production of the cabbage, the peach, or the
apple. And again, we have no proof whatever,
that the animal is capable of such changes as
those which I have mentioned (and many others
could be adduced) in the vegetable world.

Take, for instance, the dog, or pigeon, or
sheep, or ox, and look at the extreme forms of
each. There is nothing in them at all approach-
ing the difference we see between the cauliflower
and the Itrassica oleracea, or the Swedish tur-
nip and its source, the Itrassica campestris.
Further, I may remark that the principles of
diagnosis are not so well defined in plants as
in animals, and that there is a much greater

198 SPECIES NOT

similarity of parts in the former than in the
latter. But I must leave this question to be
settled by botanists: I merely now enter my
protest against the analogy of the fed-up abnor-
mities from the vegetable world being adduced
in support of the assumed change of organic
structure, which would be necessary to convert
a bear into a whale, or a nightingale into a
pelican.

In the paper above alluded to, by Dr. Asa
Gray, there are some further illustrative remarks,
which I will quote.

"Similarity of climate does not necessarily
indicate similarity in the floras of two countries.
The vegetation of Australia is a signal illustration
of the fact, being of a very peculiar type. The
distribution of plants on the earth's surface is
limited by natural laws, such as the interposition
of large bodies of water, of high and snowy
ranges of mountains, or of rainless regions, such
as . those of the Pacific coast. But the most
stringent of these laws is the law of climate, as
marked out by the isothermal lines. It is
because the presence of the same species in this
country and in the Upper Himalaya region appears
to transgress this law of climate, that the fact
seems so strange.

"But we must remember that since the period
of the formation of the tertiary rocks the climate
of this portion of the earth has gone to two
great and opposite extremes. During the fluvial
period the temperature of the Arctic regions

TRANSMUTABLE. 199

was so mild, that the elephant, lion, buffalo,
and mastodon, inhabited what is now the Arctic
regions, and of course the limits of the tropical
and temperate flora must have been extended in
a corresponding degree in the northern direction.
Again, during the previous glacial epoch the
climate of the Arctic regions was extended
southward over what is now the temperate zone,
and the temperate climate existed in regions now
tropical. Isothermal lines were the same then
as now, and California had a climate like that
of New England at the present day. The
Allegliany and Cattskill Mountains contain evi-
dence of the presence, during the glacial period,
of plants now confined to the Arctic regions.
Twice, then, have the floras of the eastern portion
of North America, and the eastern portion of
Asia, been gradually brought together, and twice
gradually separated by great climatal revolutions;
and in this way a certain amount of intermingling
<>t' species has occurred." — (Op. Cit., page 300.)
Such is the simple and most probable expla-
nation, by a distinguished botanist, of facts which
Mr. Darwin attributes to inter-migration. Mr.
Darwin believes that during the older pliocene
period, and before the glacial, the climate of
the world was warmer than it is now; that the
progenitors, or a great part of them, of present
species, lived in the circuinpolar land; that, as
the climate became less warm, they migrated
southwards, both in the Old and New World,
and that we now see their descendants in a

200 SPECIES NOT

modified condition. These emigrants mingled with
the inhabitants of the Old and New World,
and had thus to complete the productions of two
other great regions, which was of course favour-
able to the theory of modification with descent.
Mr. Darwin says that the cases of relationship
without identity, thus produced, are inexplicable
on' the theory of creation. It strikes me that
the explanation of Dr. Asa Gray will be accepted
by nine people out of ten in preference to that
of Mr. Darwin.

Now with regard to the geographical distribu-
tion of animals. Suppose, as suggested by
Agassiz, a traveller were to embark at Iceland,
and pass through the continent of America. lie
would go through representatives of every cli-
mate in the world. In Greenland and Baffin's
Bay the fauna will be arctic, and for the most
part identical with that of the same region in
Europe. When he reaches Newfoundland he will
find forests succeed the wide and naked turf
of the plains, and animals appropriate thereto.
This would be the commencement of the tem-
perate fauna. As he advances to New England
and Nova Scotia, species gradually increase in
number, until he arrives amid the rich, and as-
tonishingly various, animals of the tropics. Going
on towards the tropic of Capricorn, the contrast
of the season will be more marked, the vegetation
less luxuriant, and the animals will become fewer
and less varied. He is now again in the tem-
perate zone, and, as he approaches Cape Horn,

TRANSMUTABLE. 201

both fauna and flora will become more and more
impoverished. Then, if he gets within the limits
of the antarctic fauna, he will again tind it re-
sembling that from which he started.

Now surely cause and effect are pretty clearly
shewn in this sketch, which may represent a
general view of the fauna of the world. Wher-
ever there is plenty of food, there is the greatest
abundance of animal life, each creature being
adapted to its position in the scale of nature,
and wisely so to the circumstances of its ex-
istence.

"There is only one way," says Agassiz, "to
account for the distribution of animals as we
find them, namely, to suppose that they are
autochthonal, that is to say, that they originated
like plants, on the soil where they are found.

In order to explain the particular distribution
of many animals, we are even led to admit
that they must have been created at several
points of the same time; an inference which we
must make from the distribution of aquatic
animals, especially that of fishes. If we examine
the fishes of the different rivers of the United
States, peculiar species will be found in each
basin, associated with others that are common
to several basins. Thus, the Delaware River
contains species not found in the Hudson; but
on the other hand, the pickerel is found in both.
Now if all animals originated at one point,
and from a single stock, [as they did, according
to Darwin's theory,] the pickerel must have

202 SPECIES NOT

passed from the Delaware to the Hudson, or
vice versd, which it could only have done by
passing along the sea-shore, or by leaping over
large spaces of terra jirma; that is to say, in
both cases it would be necessary to do violence
to organization. Now such a supposition is in
direct opposition to the immutability of the laws
of nature." — (Comparative Physiology, by Gould
and Agassiz, edited by Dr. Wright, p. 384.)

Man himself, although the only animal that
can live in all, and every region of the globe, is
at the same time more or less subject to the law
of limitation, as expressed above, and it is singular,
as Agassiz has pointed out, that the races of
mankind, more or less characterized by certain
peculiarities of feature, as the Caucassian, Mon-
golian, and African, have their home in those
parts of the earth which represent the great zoo-
logical regions; the Samoyedes in Asia, the Lap-
landers in Europe, and the Esquimaux in Amer-
ica, live amid the Arctic fauna?. In South and
Central Africa we have the Hottentot and Negro,
the inhabitants of Northern Africa are allied to
their neighbours in Europe, while the natives of
New Holland are ulike its animals, the most
grotesque and uncouth of all races."

Other causes have also had great influence in
the distribution of animals and plants. "The
form of continents, the bearing of the shores, the
direction and height of mountains, the mean level
of great plains, the amount of water circumscribed
by land." The equalizing influence of a large

TRANSMUTABLE. 203

sheet of water, the temperature of which is less
liable to sudden changes than the atmospheric
air, is very apparent in the uniformity of coast
vegetation over extensive tracts, provided the soil
be of the same nature.

uBut," continues M. Agassiz, uhowever powerful
may be the degree of heat; be the air ever so
dry or ever so moist; the light ever so moder-
ate or ever so bright, alternating ever so sud-
denly with darkness, or passing gradually from
one condition to another ; these agents have never
been known to produce anything new, or to call
into existence anything that did not exist before.
Whether acting isolated or jointly, they have never
been known even to modify to any great extent
the living beings already existing, unless under
the guidance and influence of man, as we ob-
serve amonsc domesticated animals and cultivated

o

plants. This latter fact shews, indeed, that the
influence of the mind over material phenomena,
is far greater than that of physical forces, and
thus refers our thoughts again and again to a
Supreme Intelligence, for a cause of all these
phenomena, rather than to the so-called physical
causes." — (Op. Cit., page 386.)

Now these are the sentiments of a man, who,
as a naturalist, stands second to no one in ex-
istence; and I have the greatest possible pleasure
in closing this part of the subject with one
more extract from the same pen; the thought
and language, being the result of a life spent
in the study of nature, speak far more power-

204 SPECIES NOT

fully for a First Cause, and a special Creator
than anything I could adduce.

"The geographical distribution of organic beings
displays more fully the direct intervention of a
Supreme Intelligence in the plan of creation,
than any other adaptation in the physical world.
Generally the evidence of such an intervention is
derived from the benefits, material — intellectual
and moral — which man derives from nature
around him, and from the mental conviction
which consciousness imparts to him, that there
could be no such wonderful order in the universe
without an omnipotent ordainer of the whole.
This evidence, however plain to the Christian,
will never be satisfactory to the man of science
in that form. In these studies evidence must
rest upon direct observation and induction, just
as fully as mathematics claims the right to
settle all questions about measurable things.
There will be no scientific evidence of God's
working in nature, until naturalists have shewn
that the whole creation is the expression of a
thought, and not the product of physical agents.
Now, what stronger evidence of thoughtful adap-
tation can there be, than the various combinations
of similar, though specifically different, assemblages
of animals and plants, repeated all over the
world, under the most uniform and most diver-
sified circumstances? When we meet with pine
trees, so remarkable for their peculiarities, both
morphological and anatomical, combined with
beeches, birches, oaks, maples, etc., as well in

TRANSMUTABLE. 205

North America as in Europe and Northern Asia,
under similar circumstances; when we find again
representatives of the same family, with totally
different features, mingling, so to say, under low
latitudes, with palm trees, and all the luxuriant
vegetation of the tropics; when we truly behold
such scenes, and have penetrated their full meaning,
as naturalists, then we are placed in a position
similar to that of the antiquarian who visits
ancient monuments. He recognises at once the
workings of intelligence in the remains of an
ancient civilization; he may fail to ascertain
their age correctly, — he may remain doubtful as
to the order in which they were successively
constructed, — but the character of the, whole
tells him that they are works of art, and that
men like himself originated these relics of by-
gone ages. So shall the intelligent naturalist
read at once in the pictures which nature pre-
sents to him, the works of a higher intelligence;
he shall recognise in the minute perforated cells
of the conifers, which differ so ivonderfully from
those of other plants, the hieroglyphics of a pe-
culiar age ; in their needle-like leaves the escutcheon
of a peculiar dynasty; in their repeated appear-
ance, under the most diversified circumstances, a
thoughtful and thought-eliciting adaptation. He
beholds, indeed, the works of a being thinking
like himself, but he feels at the same time that
he stands as much below the Supreme Intelli-
gence in wisdom, power, and goodness, as the
works of art are inferior to the wonders of

SPECIES NOT

nature. Let naturalists look at the world undiT
such impressions, and evidence will pour in
upon us that all creatures are expressions of
the thoughts of Him whom we know, love, ami
adore unseen. " — (Lake Superior, by Professor
Louis Agassiz, page 104 et se<j.)

TRANSMUTABLE. 207

CHAPTER XI.

MR. DARWIN lays great stress on the fact that
the whale, which, when adult, has no teeth, has
in the young state, distinct rudiments of such
organs; and upon their presence, although they
never cut through the gums in the calf. With
regard to the whale, it would have been fairer
if Mr. Darwin had stated that the great majority
of the cetaceae are provided with conical triangular
teeth, and it is only the balaenida, or whale —
bone whale, in which the peculiarity he notices
is observed. We cannot account for the appear-
ance of these rudimentary teeth in the young of
one section of a family, any more than we can
account for the presence of teats in the males of
the mammalia. But that this should only occur
in one group of the family, and that the rudi-
mentary organs should be of the same type and
form as in the other Cetaceas, is to my mind
only an additional proof, were such needed, of
the beautiful uniformity which characterizes the
whole of nature. Were I to be allowed to specu-
late upon the subject, I could see in the various
uses to which the substitute for these teeth, whale-
bone is applied by man — another proof of the
design and beneficence of the Creator.

In the order of creation there is a singular
gradation of organs observed frequently, in members

208 SPECIES NOT

of the same family, but in every case such a
gradation is adapted to the circumstances of ex-
istence of the animal. This is remarkably shewn
in the family of Scincoids, among existing Saurian
reptiles, which has been quoted by Agassiz, in
his valuable work on Classification, p. 65, et scq.
This family contains one hundred species, which
have been divided by Dumeril and Bibron into
thirty-one genera. Now it has been found that
there are forms living in Europe, Western Asia,
North Africa, and the Cape of Good Hope, which
have no legs. There are others at the Cape of
Good Hope with hind legs only, each leg having
a single toe; and these are likewise found in
South America, New Holland, and New Guinea.
There are still others, only found at the Cape of
Good Hope, which have two toes on each foot.
Then there are saurians of this family with four legs,
among which some having one toe on the fore foot,
and two on the hind foot, are from South Africa;
"those with two toes on the fore foot, and one
on the hind foot, live in the Philippine Islands;
those with two toes on all four feet, in New
Holland, and those with three toes to the hind
feet, and two to the fore feet, in Algiers and
New Holland. Those with * three toes to the fore
feet inhabit Europe, North Africa, and New
Holland; those with four toes to the fore feet
New Holland; with five toes to the fore feet,
and four to the hind feet, Bengal; and with
four toes to the fore feet, and five to the hind,
Africa, West Indies, Brazil, and New Holland.

TRANSMUTABLE. 209

Those with five toes to all four feet, have the
widest distribution, and yet are so scattered, that
no single zoological province presents anything
like a complete series. On the contrary, the
mix turd of some of the representatives with per-
fect feet, with others which have them rudimentary
in almost every fauna, excludes still more de-
cidedly the idea of any influence of physical
agents upon this development"

Now it will be observed that to make the
above series uniform, there are wanting those
(1st.) with one toe to each of the four legs;
(2nd.) those with three toes to the fore feet and
two to the hind feet; (3rd.) with three and four
toes either in the fore or hind feet.

Mr. Darwin would doubtless tell us that this
speaks for his natural selection theory. What
says Agassiz, — "Similar series, though less con-
spicuous, and more limited, may be traced in
every class of the animal kingdom, not only among
living types, but also among the representatives
of past geological ages; which adds to the interest
of such series, as shewing that such combinations
include not only the elements of space, indicating
omnipresence, but also that of time, which involves
prescience"

Again, it is clear that these series indicate
selection, but not in the sense used by Mr. Dar-
win. It is the selection of a thoughtful creative
mind; for "the series is not built up of equiva-
lent representation in its different terms, some
combinations being richly endowed, others num-

210 SPECIES NOT

bering a few or even a single genus, and other*
again being altogether disregarded. Such freedom
indicates selection, and not the working of the
law of necessity." — (Page <>7.)

With regard to the whales, and their rudi-
mentary teeth, of which so much use has been
made by Mr. Darwin in his argument, wo find the
following arrangement, made by that accurate
observer Brisson, a hundred years ago:—

The first order of Cetaceans have itt> AvV//.
(Balsena;) seven species.

Second order. — Teeth in the lower jaw only,
(Cetus, sperm-whale, etc.;) seven species, in soim
of which the teeth are pointed, others falciform,
and in others slightly recurved. (Why this. Mr.
Darwin?)

Third order. — Two long teeth only in the upper
jaw; one genus and species, — (Ceratodon.) Tin
narwhal.

Fourth order. — Teeth in both jaws; one genus.
five species, — (Delphinus.) The dolphin, etc.

Here we see at a glance the expression of the
Creator's thought, and by adaptation to circum-
stances, the development or suppression of teeth
at pleasure. According to Mr. Darwin, by a
kind of miracle, the process of growth and de-
velopment became somehow stopped, and he can
only bring forward the supposition of disuse!
But we see no evidence of disuse in the toeless
Saurian, any more than in the rudimentary teeth
nf the whalebone whale.

Of all animals, however, I think the whale is.

TRANSMIT! ABLE. 211

the worst Mr. Darwin could have selected to
illustrate his theory. If we look at the beautiful
manner in which its conical larynx is made to
project into the posterior nares, when the animal
is breathing, (thus forming a communication with
the atmosphere, although the rest of the head
may be under water, and the mouth filled,) and
the means by which water is consequently ex-
pelled in the mere act of deglutition and closure
of the pharynx; if we look at the exquisite manner
in which the substitutes for teeth, the lamina?
of whalebone, allow water to pass through them,
but not a single creature, however small, that
is destined for the whale's food; if we look at
its enormous size, — its wonderful structure, — its
residence in arctic seas, producing by its mode
of feeding, the principal means of supplying heat
and food to a large race of human beings, — its
curious instincts, — its longevity, — its affection for
its young — we have one more unmistakable
proof of Design, and of Special Creation — another
monument of the Goodness, the Wisdom, and the
Omnipotence of God.

It certainly is not worth while to speculate
upon the rudimentary teeth in the calf. Mr. Dar-
win adduces them as a proof that the ox is
descended from an animal, which once had teeth
in this part of the upper jaw, which, having
become unnecessary to the ruminants, were ob-
literated by gradual disuse. It is equally im-
possible to answer such arguments, because
they have nothing but the merest and wildest

212 SPECIES NOT

supposition to stand upon. Why should the
wisdom tooth remain dormant in the human jaw
until the age of puberty? Is man, therefore,
descended from an animal which had its wisdom
tooth developed in early life with the rest, and
Avhich is now becoming obliterated by disuse?
We may build, if we like, any hypothesis, how-
ever absurd, upon this fact, but without a shadow
of proof or probability, it would be the height
of folly to expect others to believe it.

And here I may make one or two remarks,
upon the strictures of the opponents to Mr.
Darwin's doctrines, by the ingenious, but often
wild and imaginative author of "Studies in
Animal Life," in the "Cornhill Magazine," for
April, 1860. "There are three modes," says this
writer, "of combating a doctrine. The first is
to point out its strongest positions, and then shew
them to be erroneous or incomplete. The second
is to render the doctrine ridiculous, by pretend-
ing that it includes extravagant propositions.
The third is to render the doctrine odious by
forcing on it certain conclusions which it would
repudiate, but which are declared to be the
"inevitable consequences of such a doctrine."

Well, now let us apply this to Mr. Darwin's
theory. 1st. — I never could discover the slightest
evidence of a "strong position" from the begin-
ning to the end of Mr. Darwin's book. 2nd.
—If such visions are indulged in, as the de-
velopment of a goose from an oyster, or a whale
from a bear, the statement itself carries so much

TRANSMUTABLE. 213

absurdity on the face of it, and is so completely
opposed to all the known laws of biology, that
the ridicule is inherent in the proposition, not
in the criticism. 3rd. — If a doctrine assumes,
that man is but the advanced development of
one of the diverging forms of a primitive pri-
mordial organism, which has had an existence
beyond the remotest possible idea of time, and
will have, in an altered condition, an equally
long future on earth; — then, I say, the bible
cannot be a true record of Divine Revelation,
and I regard this record of infinitely more im-
portance than the opinions of Mr. Darwin or his
supporters. And when again lie tells us that
important structural alterations have proceeded
from an accidental variation, and refers the proofs
of a Divine Creator to secondary, and unknown,
and unintelligible causes, I think no language
can be too strong in deprecating such materialism.
The writer of this paper, who (though his articles
appear only in popular magazines, the readers
of which are not the best judges of their truth,)
is still entitled to attention, because he justly
lays claim to a knowledge of some of the higher
branches of physiology, in his eagerness to defend
Mr. Darwin, reverts to the hackneyed question of,
what is a species? Nothing, in fact, is easier
than to answer the question as it applies to the
great mass of living things. An owl, or an oak,
are known by characters, which distinguish them
from every other analogous or distinct form.
They are therefore species. A man, a horse, a

214 SPECIES NOT

buffalo, fin eagle, a pike, are distinct and well-
marked species; but because exceptional instances
now and then occur from variation, we are told
that it is necessary to use such terms as the
"unknown element of a distinct act of creation,'*
— that is to say, you refine away all you know
to express that which you do not understand.

I have, however, a much stronger objection to
make to this writer's views; namely, to the mode
of reasoning, by which he arrives at conclusions
similar to those of Mr. Darwin, that the verte-
brata are derived from one common parent. He
says that neither side can bring proof. I entirely
deny this; I think there is abundant proof of a
most satisfactory nature, that eacli animal in ex-
istence, has been created by a Designing Mind,
and adapted to the circumstances under which
it is destined to live. But how does our critic
argue the question? What does he bring on his
side, as a substitute for "dogmatic decision?"
First of all lie takes the family of cats, including
lions, panthers, pumas, leopards, tigers, jaguars,
ocelots, and domestic cats. Well this is a toler-
ably good family for his argument, because there
is a certain similarity in their habits, which might
induce a belief in some minds, of the possibility
<>f their having originated from one progenitor.
And I do not object that to illustrate this,
(notwithstanding perfectly gratuitous assumption,)
that the writer in the "Cornhill Magazine,"
should bring forward the development of numerous
languages, or that he should argue that the va-

TRANSMUTABLE. 215

rious species of cats do not differ more than the
languages of the Spaniard, Italian, Portuguese,
Wallachian, and lihoetian, do from each other,
although they are all derived from the "fossil"
Latin.

This is a kind of reasoning which is sufficiently
intelligible to illustrate an assumed fact, and al-
though it by no means either proves it, or gives
it a greater plausibility, still there is nothing
that one could exactly lay hold of on the ground
of false analogy. But the question is carried
further, and we are told that because eight lan-
guages more ancient still, including the Latin,
point to a common origin, which was to them
what the Latin is to the six mentioned; there-
fore we may be justified in supposing that all
the classes of the vertebrate animals point to the
existence of some older type, now extinct, from
which they were all developed.

When he carries his argument to this point,
he leaves the ground of possibility, and his
analogy fails. So long as there was no change
of type, the variations in a. family may be illus-
trated, by the variations in a language. But as
language is merely a function, it is impossible
that the analogy will hold good when applied to
u total change of structure. There is nothing
difficult to conceive in the variation of language.
That at one time there was but one, we may
be perfectly certain, and that it has varied into
all the languages of the world is equally true,
and this may be taken fairly enough to shew

216 SPECIES NOT

the variation of some species. But to bring it
forward to illustrate the origin of a fish, a rep-
tile, a bird, and a ,mammal, from one parent
form, is not sound. It must not be forgotten
that vertebrate animals of different classes do not
merely differ from each other in fins, and wings,
and hands, or in living in diverse elements,
and breathing, digesting, and circulating their
blood in various modes, and by apparatuses very
different, but that they are clearly distinct organ-
isms, formed with reference to the individual. A
bird, for instance, is not made up of the different
parts in a fish, put together so as to constitute
a bird, nor is a mammal an aggregate of the
constituent organs of a bird; but each mammal,
bird, reptile, and fish, has its most minute parts
formed in reference to the individual, and its
mode of life. Each being is perfect in itself,
and it would be as impossible, physiologically
speaking, to convert a fish into a bird, a bird
into a mammal, or to degrade a bear into a
whale, as it would be to transmute ideally a man
into an oak tree. Not only the form of the
skeleton, but the histological anatomy of the
bone, is different; not only are the muscles dif-
ferently formed, and shaped, and attached, but
their minute anatomy is dissimilar. The brain
and nervous system differ widely in each, and
there are no two classes of vertebrate that
have the same sized blood discs, or capillary
vessels which convey them! How then can the
writer in the "Cornhill," a magazine, I presume,

TRANSMUTABLE. 217

intended for the perusal of the youth of the rising
generation, venture on an analogy so false, as
that of comparing the variation of a language with
the transmutation of organisms, so totally different
from each other in minute anatomy, and habits
of life? The effect upon my own mind will be
merely to doubt that gentleman's analogies in
future; but what the impressions may be upon
the young, and the thoughtless, when told that
they had a common origin with a fish, a snake,
a bird, or a beast of the forest, I will not ven-
ture to predict. I can only express a hope that
the error will be rectified, arid the antidote spread
as widely as the bane.

In the "British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical
Review," for April, 1860, there is also a very
lengthened review of Mr. Darwin's book. The
writer is, I dare say, well known among scientific
men, in the London coteries. I have, however,
not the slightest knowledge of the position he
holds in the scientific world, but I assume it to
be a high one, from the rank which the Journal,
in which he writes, maintains, and also from
the general manner in which the article is
executed. In a critique, extending over thirty-
seven pages of closely-printed matter, this writer
does everything he can, to prove the truth of
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. He considers the theory
as having hit the exact truth; and he says he
does not hesitate to call it a wonderful book.

Whatever may, however, be the position of the
writer in the scientific world, I will point out

218 SPECIES NOT

one or two singular inconsistencies, which makes
me, a student in Natural History, not only scep-
tical of the writer's judgment, but doubtful of
the soundness of his inferences. —

1st. — There is nothing upon which Mr. Darwin
more strongly insists, than that his theory is
incomplete, and not to be proved, by reason of
the 'imperfection of the geological record." Now
this writer occupies a considerable portion of his
article, in attempting to shew the truth of Mr.
Darwin's book, from the geological record. He
proves, however, nothing. The succession of
lonns in geological time is a fact, which no
geologist attempts to deny. "Organic remains,"
says Professor Owen, "traced from their earliest
known graves, are succeeded one series by another
to the present period, and never re-appear, when
once lost sight of in the ascending search. And
not only as respects the vertebrata, but the sum
of the animal species, at each successive geolo-
gical period, has been distinct and peculiar to
such period."

The reviewer, however, places the facts of a
successive analogous fauna, in a very different
light. "It may be stated with the highest pro-
liability, from the evidence of fossil remains, that
a very considerable proportion of those classes
of animals now living, whose bones or shells
afford means of comparison, are. the direct de-
scendants of animals, that existed before the
occurrence of those last great changes, which
gave to a large part of the surface of the

TRANSMUTABLE. 219

globe, its present physical features."

Owen puts it in this way. — t:No one, save a
prepossessed uniformitarian, would infer from the
lacing of the permian, and the opis of the trias,
that the Lamellibranchiate mollusks existed in
the same rich variety of development at those
periods, as during the tertiary and present times;
and no prepossession can close the eyes to the
fact, that the Lamellibranchiate have superseded
the Palliobranchiate bivalves." And then, he
continues, that to suspect, that the existing genera
of siphonated bivalves, and univalves, abounded in
permian, triassic, or oolitic strata, and that they
have escaped observation, because some Lamelli-
brarichiates, with open mantle, and some holosto-
matous and asiphon ate gasteropods, have been found
in secondary strata, uis not more reasonable, as it
seems to me, than to conclude that the proportion
of mammalian life may have been as great in
secondary, as in tertiary strata, because a few
small forms of the lowest orders have made their
appearance in triassic and oolitic beds.11 — (Op.
Cit., p. 61.)

The reviewer wishes to make out these mam-
malian remains, as proof of a "great abundance."
(See p. 375.)

2nd. — I object, generally, to the inferences of
the reviewer, because he has drawn one of great
importance to the theory he supports, from facts
assumed, but not proved, to be true in geology.

The discovery of celts, in strata known to be
pre-adamic, was made the subject of a paper, and

220 SPECIES NOT

comments, by Sir C. Lyell, at the meeting of the
British Association, for 1859. Upon this the
reviewer remarks, ult may be inferred that man
has lived on earth for at least ten times the
time, he is supposed to have done." He continues,
"that, although the inference cannot be regarded
as certain, there is a strong probability that the
men who made the celts, were contemporaneous
with the mammoth, rhinoceros, etc." And fur-
ther, and to this paragraph I beg to draw
particular attention, as it illustrates the mode of
reasoning adopted by Mr. Darwin, as well as his
supporters : —

uNow when due weight is given to these, (that
is, the uncertain inferences,) and other considera-
tions, it becomes very difficult to form any con-
ception, as to the introduction of new types of
organic life in any other mode than by descent,
with modification, from those previously existing."

I need not, I am sure, dwell upon these celts.
They have never yet been found to occupy any
stratum, in which they could not have been
buried by the ancient people, who used them as
spear heads. Professor Henslow has several which
I gave him, and which were found in the gravel-
beds in Suffolk, mingled with bones of the
mammoth and rhinoceros. Surely we are not
called upon to foundan argument against special
creation, upon such facts as these?

3rd. — The reviewer is, I think, inconsistent
in supporting Mr. Darwin's views, and then
scouting his deductions. He thinks it may

TRANSMUTABLE. 221

be conceded, that birds have arisen from one
progenitor, or, at least, he assumes it for the
sake of argument, admitting "the possibility;"
but then he entirely denies the remotest possi-
bility of birds and fishes, or reptiles and mam-
mals, having had a common origin; and he
concludes by the following : — "So too there seems
to us so much in the psychical capacity of man,
however degraded, to separate him from the nearest
of the mammalian class, that we can far more
easily believe him to have had a common an-
cestry with the chimpanzee, and to have been
separated from it, by a series of progressive
modifications."

Now, of the two opinions I think that of Mr.
Darwin's, infinitely the most honest. He states
a theory, believes it to be true, and boldly says
what he considers, is the inevitable consequence.
The reviewer, on the contrary, believes Mr.
Darwin's theory right, at the same time that he
knocks it down, by writing for the perfection of
the geological record, and denying its legitimate
consequences.

If Mr. Darwin's theory holds good, as to the
common ancestry of the gold-crested wren, and
the ostrich, or dinornis, the eagle, and the par-
tridge, the parrot, and the nightingale, the pike,
and the minnow, the salmon, and the perch, then
in the name of consistency, why is it not good
for the monkey, and the man? The reviewer
shields himself under the psychical difference. I
am afraid Mr. D. will not accept such a compromise.

222 SPECI r.- v>i

The best part of this well-written review is
the following passage: — "But when we once go
beyond the limits of our actual experience, the
question, as to the extent c.f this change, is one
as to which we have no data whatever, for any
positive conclusion, and we arc* left altogether to
the guidance of probabilities."-— (Page 104.)

And now, a few remarks upnn Mr. Darwin's
arguments from embryology. And the first thing
we notice is an erroneous statement in natural
history. "The vermiform larvae of moths, flics,
beetles, ete., resemble each other much more
closely, than do the mature insects." All breeders
of lepidopterous insects which varv, must know
that this is not correct. The larvae, for instance,
of Heliothis maryinatii, which feeds on the rest-
harrow, (Ononis sjrinosa,) in autumn, diller so
much from each other, that you may easily } i-,-k
out three groups, which an entomologist wl;<>
did not know the larva, would arrange into at
least three different species; but the peii'ect. in-
sect never varies appreciably, except in size.

My friend, the Kev. H. H. Crewe, a gentleman
well known among entomologists, for his ex-
tensive and accurate knowledge of the Iarva3 of
lepidoptera, sends me the following list, which
differ more than do the perfect insects; th< se
with an asterisk exhibit strong and marked
varieties: — A. galatcea, A. atropos, Fm. yopuli,
C/t. elpenor, D. coryli, T. cratcegi* N. camelina}
N. dictcea* N. drornedarius, JJ. cceruleocephala,
A. Icjorina, L. lythargyria, M. brassica, M.

TKANSMUTABLE. 223

persicaria* T. cruda* H. dysodea, P. ineticulosa*
H. chenopodii* H. marginata,* E. cratcegata*
0. Udentata,* E. angularia, A. letularia* C.
pusaria* F. conspicuata, E. linariata* E. cen-
tauriata,* E. Haworthiata, E. satyr ata, E. deno-
tata, E. nanata* E. subnotata, E. almnthiata*
E. assimilata* E. coronata* E. solrinata.

Then we are told of a group of forms, such as
these caterpillars, which, in the majority of in-
stances, hardly move at all, except to and from
their food, that the ''embryos are active." Mr.
Darwin takes this assumed difference between
the larva and imago, as one proof that they
diifer also in structure, and that they are
adapted for special uses of life. He also alludes
to the resemblance of embryonic existence lasting
till a rather late age. He cannot either see
why the looped condition of the arteries near
the branchial slits, should exist equally in the
young mammal, the egg of the bird, or the
spawn of the frog; and then, again, he makes
a comparison of an equal difficulty, existing in
a similarity of the bones in the hand of man,
the wing of the bat, and the fin of the porpoise.
If, however, Mr. Darwin had not been blinded
by his theory, he would have seen at once that
the embryos he has mentioned, have to live an
aquatic existence before birth. Why, therefore,
should not the arrangement in these branchiae be
on the same type, as that which is found to
answer so admirably in the gills of the fish?

After some more writing, Mr. Darwin asks,

224 SPECIES NOT

How can we explain these several facts in em-
bryology: 1st. — The very general, but not uni-
versal difference in structure, between the embryo
and the adult.

It is difficult to understand how this could
have been otherwise, as far as external appear-
ances, the worst of all guides in the matter, is
concerned. The embryo is the germ only, of the
future animal. It is a structure as yet unfin-
ished, and of course appears different. Look at
a caterpillar. How unlike a butterfly ! Yet
-when it makes its final change into a pupa, you
can trace in the pupa-case all the organs, —
wings, legs, antennas, eyes, — of the future insect!
Break the pupa into two parts, and you will
find it hollow, containing a fluid. Still how
unlike a butterfly. In a fortnight or more, if
left under the circumstances which the species
requires, your pupa splits, and out comes a
perfect insect! Who will say that at least the
pupa did not foreshadow the insect, and yet
how different?

2nd. — "Parts in the same individual embryo,
which ultimately become very unlike, and serve
for divers purposes, being at this early period
alike." This question has been answered before.
If the embryo has to exist as a fish, it is pro-
vided with branchiae in early life, as the reptile
is. The visceral arches in the embryo of the
human frame are in no way analogous with the
branchiae of fish, inasmuch as they are converted
into the bones of the face.

TRANSMUTABLE. 225

3rd. — "Embryos of different species within the
same class, generally, but not universally resemble
each other." A great deal too much has been
made out of this fact by theorists. M. Serres
has founded upon it the following generalization :
— "Human organo-genesis is a transitory com-
parative anatomy, as, in its turn, comparative
anatomy is a fixed and permanent state of the
organo-genesis of man." "But," as remarks Pro-
fessor Bennett, (Outlines of Physiology, p. 180,)
"that the human embryo ever resembles a worm,
a mollusc, reptile, fish, or bird, can, on careful
examination, nowhere be recognised. It is true
that at one time all ova resemble each other;
but it is equally certain, that from the first
moment of their formation, they are impressed
with a power of developing themselves only in
one direction, so that the ovum of a reptile,
fish, or bird, will always be developed into
similar animals, and by no concurrence of cir-
cumstances, will ever be transformed into different
ones."

This obvious truth, speaking at once to the
conviction, ought to put an end to all the theories
which have been raised, upon the simple fact of
the early similarity of vertebrate embryos.

4th. — "The structure of the embryo is not
closely related to its condition of existence, ex-
cept when the embryo becomes at any period
of life active, and has to provide for itself."
Why should the structure of a transitional or-
ganism be related to that with which it is not

226 SPECIES NOT

destined to have any ultimate connection? Its
organization is not permanent, but that this is
sufficient for the circumstances of its transitory
life, is a fact which needs no illustration. As a
general truth, nothing can be more perfect than
the means provided for embryonic life and growth.

5th. — "The embryo apparently, has sometimes
a higher organization than the mature animal,
into which it is developed."

As this depends entirely upon the arbitrary
characters given by naturalists to the term
"higher organization," we may at once dismiss
it as a simple error of judgment, in those who
do not distinguish between the relative terms,
embryo, zooid, and individual. Mr. Darwin, how-
ever, reasoning upon the above five propositions, as
though they were literally true, thus attempts to
account for them, according to his theory.

First, he concludes, "it is quite possible that
each of the many successive modifications, by
which each species has acquired its present struc-
ture, may have supervened at a very early period
of life; in other cases it is quite possible, that
they may have appeared at an extremely early
period."

Secondly, he considers that at whatever age
any variation first appears in the parent, it tends
to re-appear at a corresponding age in the off-
spring."

These conclusions were arrived at from the
following experiments, among others: — He mea-
sured the puppies and parents of greyhounds, and

TRANSMUTABLE. 227

bull-dogs, at six days old, and found that they
had not nearly "acquired their full amount of
proportional difference."

The same experiment with the foals and mothers
of the cart-horse, and racer, gave similar results.
So with all the race of domestic pigeons, and
their proportional differences in the specified several
points of beak, width of mouth, length of eyelid,
size of foot, and length of leg, were very much
less when compared with the blue-rock, than in
the full-grown birds, with one remarkable excep-
tion, namely, the short-faced tumbler.

Alluding to the above measurements, Mr. Dar-
win remarks, uFanciers select their horses, dogs,
and pigeons, for breeding, when they are nearly
grown up ; they are indifferent whether the desired
qualities and structures have been acquired earlier
or later in life, if the full-grown animal possesses
them. And the cases just given, more especially
that of pigeons, seem to shew that the charac-
teristic differences, which give value to each
breed, and which have been accumulated by man's
selection, have not generally first appeared at an
early period of life, and have been inherited by
the offspring at a corresponding not early period"

So that because the pigeon, twelve hours old,
an imperfect organism, with one part, according
to the laws of development, more advanced than
another; because this half-formed pigeon does not,
at twelve hours, shew the proportions of difference
in structure which is exhibited by the full-grown
bird, and the presumed original stock, the blue-

228 SPECIES NOT

rock — therefore, at a remote period of the pigeon's
history, it acquired, accidentally, some altered
structure at a later period of life, which will be
shewn by the present young bird, when it reaches
that age!!

And see how this monstrous piece of reasoning
is applied to Mr. Darwin's doctrine. He takes
a genus of birds, which, according to his views,
have descended from a common parent, and be-
come diversified in form, etc. Then he says, that
those many slight successive steps of variation,
"having supervened tit a rather late age, and
having been inherited at a corresponding age,
the young of the new species of our supposed
genus, will manifestly tend to resemble each other
much more closely than do the adults, just as
we have seen in the case of pigeons." In fjir.t,
if we take a bird just out of the egg, it repre-
sents, according to Mr. Darwin, the permanent
condition of one of that bird's ancestors. Every
hour gives a new phase — presently feathers begin
to spring out, that represents the former condi-
tions of the bird at a later period, and so on
till it flies away, when it has reached the last
variation, which constitutes it the perfect bird.
uFor the embryo is the animal in its less modi-
fied state; and in so far it reveals the structure
of its progenitor.'" — (Page 449.)

Then Mr. Darwin carries these views up to
families, or even classes. "The fore-limbs, for
instance, which served as legs in the parent
species, may become, by a long course of modiii-

TRANSMUTABLE. 229

cation, adapted in one descendant to act as hands,
in another as paddles, in another as wings; and
upon the above principles, the fore-limbs will
resemble each other closely, for they have not
been modified. But the new species will differ
greatly, because the limbs in the mature animal
have undergone much modification at a rather
late period of life, having thus been converted
into hands, paddles, or wings."

The writer in the "Cornhill Magazine," would,
I dare say, be very angry if I were to treat
these most remarkable suppositions with ridicule ;
and he would, doubtless, be very much shocked
were any one to suggest the probability of mo-
dification of structure being produced in an
animal by "exercise" and "disuse," (page 447,)
so as to convert it into a different species, as
being anything akin to atheism! And yet. I shall
fall under this writer's condemnation, for I cer-
tainly consider that when statements are utterly
opposed to known facts, and not supported by
any proof, they are quite open to ridicule. When
they go beyond this, and attribute the Design
of God to chance, then such writing is atheistical.

But I am going to mention one or two facts,
for, unfortunately, the people who read these
pernicious writings, are those who are not ex-
pected to know anything of physiology; and if
statements are made, that are plausible on their
face, they are too apt to accept them as truths.

I deny then, in toto, that the phases of the
embryo represent anything which the most vivid

230 SPECIES NOT

imagination can picture to itself, of a grade of
permanent forms of once living beings. The facts
have become well known, from experiments upon
inferior animals, as the dog, rabbit, etc. Pro-
fessor Bennett has given, in his "Outlines of
Physiology," p. 166, et seq, a series of twenty-
eight figures, taken from the plates of the cele-
brated embryologist Bischoff. I mention these
instead of the originals, because they are more
accessible, and the nature of the subject requires
references rather than details.

Professor Bennett has also a series of wax-
models of each of these phases, in the development
of the embryo of the dog. Now what do we
see? — Why continuous development. The embryo
is from beginning to end imperfect, and there is
not one figure, except that of the ovum, which
can, by the most prejudiced believer in natural
selection, be turned into the likeness of any living
thing. The organisms are all incomplete, they
do not fulfil the essential elements, which can
be summed up into a living animal; and the
last, that which is seen when the shape and form
is becoming discernible, has all the viscera ex-
posed, and is as unlike anything we can conceive
to represent a living permanent creature, as can
possibly be imagined. But what we do see, is
the most beautiful series of changes in the form-
ation of the being. A great deal of light is
thrown upon the mode of development in living
things, by these observations of Bischoff, but they
utterly annihilate the doctrine of permanency of

TRANSMUTABLE. 231

form, being represented by the phases of develop-
ment in the embryo.

As to the "accidental" modification of the bird's
wing, so as to convert it into a paddle, or a
hand, the idea is so utterly preposterous, that
one can hardly find patience enough to notice
such a thing. What does Mr. Darwin mean by
inheritance? Does he mean that a bird, having
modified its wing by "exercise" or "disuse," into
a hand or a paddle, that this modification would
be inherited by an oviparous, or a viviparous
progeny? Does he believe that the bird, during
the "countless ages" the wings must have occu-
pied in being modified, had "accidental variation"
fitting in other parts, so as to convert the bird
into a mammal?

But the whole supposition is absurd in the
extreme. How can an organ formed for flying,
be converted, by "accidental variation," into one
adapted for grasping? into an organ so exquisitely
formed as the human hand? Or what analogy
is there between such a change, and that produced
in the wattle of the carrier, or the beak of the
tumbler, by the fancier of pigeons?

In the one case you pamper a bird with food,
and keep it in close confinement, until you so
affect the nutritive organs of the animal, as to
destroy the balance between excess and deficiency
of nutrition, and the bird varies either in having
too much, or too little horn in its beak; too many
or too few feathers in its tail, or if pampered to
extreme, perhaps a wattle grows on its beak, just

232 SPECIES NOT

as an alderman's nose gets red under turtle soup.
The fancier seizes hold of the change, and manages
to perpetuate part of this variation, so as to give
an abnormal character to his bird, for none of
these fancy pigeons are natural forms, and thus,
in course of time, he produces what appears to
be a distinct variety !

But Mr. Darwin invents a power in nature like
that of the pigeon fancier, which he imagines to
be ever present, to "take advantage" of any acci-
dental modification of structure in the wing of
the bird. This mysterious power, working through
endless ages, is gradually changing the wing, which
is formed for carrying the bird through the air,
into a hand, which is part of the structure of
the human race, or monkey. Here everything is
left to imagination. AYhat becomes of the un-
happy bird, in its myriads of intermediate stages
between a bird and a monkey, or man, we are
not told; but we are simply asked to believe, (be-
cause it is a part of Mr. Darwin's theory,) that
organs, though at first sight somewhat alike, yet
so different; designed for other purposes, and oc-
curring in animals of natures which have nothing
in common; adapted for different positions in the
great scale of nature; — the one a beast that
perisheth, the other a reasoning being, with a
soul endowed with immortality, and made in the
express image of Him, by whom all was designed ;
that these organs should be altered by the result
of a chance variation; — such an opinion as this
is, I say, so absurd, that in spite of the wrath

TRANSMUTABLE. 233

of the writer in the "Cornhill," I must take the
liberty of treating it with ridicule.

I have made use of the various proofs of de-
sign and special creation, which are to be drawn
from the works of nature, or the beautiful struc-
ture of organized beings. But an equally strong
argument may be drawn in favour of both, from
the diseases with which the human body is af-
flicted. Nay, I doubt much, if a stronger case
against Mr. Darwin's views can be made out
from any other of the vast store of facts at our
command.

There is nothing more wonderful in the whole
scheme of creation, than the mode by which a
broken bone is restored; or the protecting arm,
by which the vis medicatrix naturce resists the
encroachment of an aneurism, or the rupture of
a fatal abscess, which may be invading some vital
spot in the system. Now this preservative power
exists in all animal structures, in the lowest
zoophytes, as well as in man; and it clearly and
unmistakably displays the provision of a wise and
beneficent Being, for events which He alone knew
would happen, and without which the great world
He had created, would have been incomplete.

But, though like structures have a similar
principle of reparation and conservation, the dis-
eases of the animals of creation, as every one
knows, are essentially different, arid in many cases
peculiar to the genus or family. Could these
diseases have been imposed on man, for instance,
by "natural selection?" How the whole mythical

234 SPECIES NOT

absurdity crumbles into dust, when the mind,
educated in the laws of life, and conversant with
the forms of human disease, ponders for a moment
upon such an explanation.

This subject has been well and beautifully
handled by Simon, in his "Pathology," and I
cannot forbear quoting the following passage,
(page 17:)—

uWe find that disease works according to laws
definite, constant, invariable; we find in it no
contradiction to the laws of life; on the contrary,
that the latter, in their simplicity and compre-
hensiveness, include and account for it; that the
power of adaptation to circumstances, the power
of resistance to casualties, the power of repair
after injuries, would not be possible or conceivable
attributes of the human body, except under con-
ditions which impose the liability to disease. At
every turn of the subject, and in every fresh
illustration, which new study reveals to us, we
derive deeper and more steadfast convictions of
the total absence of caprice, chance, or irregu-
larity, even in the strongest influences of disease.
We become habitual observers of that mystery,
which most of all tends to chasten and elevate
the mind; observers, namely, of the unbroken
uniformity which prevails in the operation of
natural laws. Standing in the daily exercise of
our profession, amidst an apparent chaos of dark-
ness and suffering, where all at first seems as of
yore, 4to be without form and void,7 it is one
great privilege, that by the aid of scientific in-

TRANSMUTABLE. ' 235

sight, we are raised to a recognition of the 'Spirit
which moves upon the face of the waters,' and
which now, as in the first morning of creation,
resolves that chaos into harmonious order, that
darkness into intelligible light, that suffering into
the feeble counterpoise of some greater or more
extensive good."

If we believe Mr. Darwin, his ancient primor-
dial fungus must have contained within itself all
the elements necessary, not only to people the
whole world with living things, but the principle
by which the advanced growths of these times
resists the encroachments of disease, or repairs
the injuries of accident.

236 SPECIES NOT

CHAPTER XII.

SINCE the MS. of this work was sent to the
press, I have read the discussion at Oxford, and
beg to offer one or two remarks upon the argu-
ments of Professor Huxley and Dr. Hooker, the
two champions of Mr. Darwin's views.

Professor Huxley says that Mr. Darwin's theory
is not an hypothesis, hut an explanation of
natural phenomena. Now really, I think this is
drawing rather too strongly upon our credulity.
Surely Mr. Huxley cannot mean that the doctrines
of ''natural selection" and "variation of species,"
are mere demonstrations of nature? If so, the
whole question would be out of the range of
argument. For my own part, I conceive that
Mr. Darwin's theory fails, not only from the
want of facts, but by the misinterpretation and
misapplication of both real and assumed natural
phenomena. Mr. Darwin sees a shrike taking
its bath on a hot day, and he claims this as an
instance of "divergence in character" from the
shrike to the kingfisher. He sees a substitution
of whalebone for teeth in one genus of a family,
all the rest of which have teeth; and because in
the former the teeth are found rudimentary, Mr.
Darwin believes that the animal could not have
been thus imperfectly specially created, and claims
it as an instance of variation by natural selection !

TRANSMUTABLE. 237

I need not again go over ground which has al-
ready been trodden. But then, continues Mr.
Huxley, with singular inconsistency, "Without
asserting that every part of the theory had been
confirmed, he maintained that it was the best-
explanation of the origin of species which had
yet been offered."

Of course an assumption like this cannot be
argued. It is a mere opinion, as proofless as the
theory it attempts to support. Mr. Huxley fur-
ther remarks that "man was once a monad — a
mere atom, and nobody could say at what moment
in the history of his development, he became
consciously intelligent."

Surely Mr. Huxley must have here been misre-
ported, for of all natural phenomena, none are more
exquisitely beautiful, and at the same time more
damaging to Mr. Darwin's theory, than those
which we observe in the study of embryology.
That atom, to which Mr. Huxley alludes, contains
within itself, the elements for development into
the future conscious being, and nothing else; and
it is unphilosophical to compare it with a monad,
or any other, either mature, or embryonic or-
ganism. No other atom of matter in the world
is similar, except in external form, or chemical
composition, to that germ. Because it is cellular,
and contains a nucleus, is it correct to say that
it is similar to another nucleated cell, which would
ultimately become a fish or a bird? Because we
cannot see, still less understand, the process of de-
velopment, or rather the power which guides that

238 SPECIES NOT

process, are we to assume that it can by any
stretch of imagination, even be considered analogous
to any other germ, in which the process is the same,
while the end is entirely different? Surely not.
That this atom passes through the phases of being,
resembling somewhat in shape the permanent
condition of other animals, is only one of the ten
thousand beautiful examples of harmony, in Crea-
tive Wisdom. I hope we shall very soon banish
from our system of philosophy, arguments founded
upon the grossest misapplications of creative law.
Professor Huxley further remarks, "The question
was not so much one of a transmutation of species
as of the production of forms, which become
permanent."

But this is entirely going away from Mr.
Darwin. If the theory were true, there could
be no such thing as permanence, as Mr. Darwin
admits, when he expresses a belief, that "no living
thing is destined to transmit its form unaltered
to a far distant posterity."

Dr. Hooker again, in his answer to the Bishop
of Oxford, remarks, "The first of these doctrines,
(transmutation of existing species one into another)
was so wholly opposed to the facts, reasonings,
and results of Mr. Darwin's work, that he could
not conceive how any one who had read it, could
make such a mistake."

As I did not hear the Bishop's remarks, and
as I see nothing opposed to Mr. Darwin's theory
in the report published in the "Athenaeum," I
•am driven to the conclusion that Dr. Hooker, on

TRANSMUTABLE. 239

the part of Mr. Darwin, denies the hypothesis of
''transmutation of species," as it is generally un-
derstood among naturalists. If such is Dr.
Hooker's meaning, he gives up Mr. Darwin's
theory altogether; for without such transmutation
it falls to the ground, by its own inherent ab-
surdity. If Mr. Darwin's bear catching flies is
ultimately converted into a whale, what is this?
Time, of course, must be granted for such a
change, but whether it is one year, or one billion
of years, the fact of the transmutation is equally
the same, and the argument will apply against
such a change, however effected, as though it
took place in a day, or week, or year.

I hold such a doctrine to be opposed to every
known fact in science, and without it, how can
Dr. Hooker claim for his variations, the ultimate
character of species. If Dr. H.'s group of plants,
which he ingeniously compares to a cob-web,
having a species in the centre, the radiating
and concentric lines being variations, while the
connecting links are distinct; if this group is an
ever-changing series of forms, which ultimately
become species, how is this done, except by
''transmutation?"

But how does Dr. Hooker determine the specific
or generic value, of each member or section of
his group? Why, by some characters that are
fixed and unvarying. If not, he is stopped in
limine, and refers back the "variation" to its
species, or he breaks up, or enlarges his genus.
Now I contend that if there were processes of

240 SPECIES NOT

continual change going on in the plants, he could
not afiix to them the arbitrary characters, by
which they are now classified. An industrious
and highly-gifted man like Dr. Hooker, is, of
course, continually splitting up, as it were, the
species of the vegetable world, and placing them
in groups, according to their affinities. He is
exercising human intellect, and human knowledge,
in unfolding the plan of a Divine Creative In-
telligence. If he fails in discovering those dis-
tinctive characters, by which species are separated
from mere accidental, climatic, or functional va-
riation, this is no proof against separate creative
force, but only another in the long list of failures,
in endeavouring to comprehend Infinite Wisdom.
What human intellect will dare to limit, or
define the physical boundaries, by which he de-
termines his species, the investigations into which
are for the most part carried on by microscopical
examination, which is open to a hundred sources
of fallacy? No two men are hardly even now
agreed, upon the true value of characters, by which
species may be separated from varieties. Are we
then prepared to say, that because the lines of
the ideal botanical cobweb, present strong analo-
gies to each other, and to one central plant, that
they are plants in a transitional condition? And
are we to found, upon such data as this, the
doctrine of progressive development and transmu-
tation of species, at the cost of the great truth
of special creation? And are we to be told if
we do not accept the theory, which is founded

TRANSMUTABLE. 241

upon such arguments as these, that it is because
we substitute sentiment for intellect, or that we
are unable to "grasp"* the subject? Were such
men as Faley or Bell, or are such men as Agassiz
or Owen, unable to comprehend such reasoning?
Let us, above everything, have this matter argued
fairly, and not encumbered by the assumption,
that the doctrine of Mr. Darwin is not believed,
because it is not understood. Dr. Hooker makes,
I think, a great mistake, when he states that the
belief in the original creation of species, was
"merely another hypothesis, which, in the abstract,
was neither more rior less entitled to acceptance
than Mr. Darwin's; neither was it, in the present
state of science, capable of demonstration.'7

I answer to this —

1st. — If I take a living animal, I find in it
a beautiful system of organs, endowed with the
faculties of performing separate functions, the sum
total of which constitutes the life of the being.
I find that these functions are performed according
to a fixed, and evidently pre-ordained series of
laws. I place the fact of the existence of these
organs, and the performance of these functions,
in conjunction with the position of the creature
in the world, arid I find that by the exercise of
my reason, I can form no other deduction, than
that all this was specially provided by the dis-
tinct creative act of a Great First Cause. I find
all the parts of the creature act harmoniously
and co-ordinately one with another; and therefore

* See "Gardener's Chronicle," May, 1860.

E

242 SPECIES NOT

I draw the further sound induction, that they
were pre-ordained to act collectively for the good
of the animal, and that they could not have been
produced by "variation," "natural selection,"
"divergence of form," or any other of the elements
of Mr. Darwin's theory.

2nd. — I take a view of the more intricate
structure of any single organ in the animal, and
I find it congruous and complete, not indica-
ting a transitional phase of organization, but a
thing which is in itself perfect, which could not
be formed, or improved by the highest exercise
of my reason ; which would be spoiled were I to
add to it, or subtract from it; which is exquisitely
adapted to the condition of the animal in the
world in which it lives, and for the fulfilment
of that animal's destiny; and again I say, I have
the highest possible proof that I am dealing with
an organism, specially and distinctly created by
Infinite Wisdom.

3rd. — I take all the aniirials and plants in the
world. I give a rapid glance at all animated na-
ture, and I find earth, air, and water, peopled with
a vast assemblage of living things. I find them
variously organized, and most wonderfully and
fearfully made. I see plants of every kind adapted
to every climate, affording the means of life to
myriads of beings more highly organized. I see
the sun shine, and the rain fall, arid the spring
succeed to the cold of winter, and the fruitful sum-
mer bringing its rich harvests, and I say in all
this there is design and adaptation. I see, fur-

TRANSMUTABLE. 243

ther, vast groups of animals, all specially provided
for, according to their position in the scale, with
man at the head, endowed with reason and con-
sciousness. I exercise my inductive faculties, arid
I have proof that the gilled and finned fish was
formed to live in water, that the winged bird
was specially created for flying, that the various
animals in the scale of mammals, have all a
structure adapted to the climate in which they
exist, to their means of procuring food, provision
for their safety, and propagation of their kind.
Am I to be told that my induction of a special
creation here is false?

Is such a proof to be placed in comparison,
for a moment, with the mythical dreams of a
human intellect, producing a system of creation,
which acts neither by miracle or law, which
has everything to assume from its primordial
germ, down to the vast living world around us !
—which has to create anti-silurian worlds, sup-
posed to exist for billions of years before thi
oldest geological formation ! — which compares th<
operation of Nature's laws, to those -of the pigeon-
fancier! — and her beautiful and perfect organisms,
to his abnormal deformities ! — which destroys every
vestige of a shadow of belief in a watchful Pro-
vidence, and adaptive creation, and which strikes
deeply and irrecoverably at the root of both
natural and revealed religion?

God forbid that I should allow such a doctrir. ;
as this to be placed, for one moment, in com-
parison with that, which the highest intellects

244 SPECIES NOT

that ever adorned the world, have incontestably
proved to be true.

And here I will make a remark upon a passage,
contained in the last edition of Mr. Darwin's
book, which I confess that I read with mingled
feelings of astonishment, and regret. It is as
follows : —

"A celebrated author, and Divine, has written
to me, that 'he has gradually learnt to see that
it is just as noble a conception of the Deity, to
believe that He created a few original forms,
capable of self-development into other and needful
forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act
of creation to supply the voids caused by the
action of His laws.' '

I think we ought to have had the name of
this Divine, given with this remarkable statement.
I confess that I have not yet fully made up my
mind, that any Divine could have ever penned
lines, so fatal to the truths he is called upon
to teach. How does he reconcile the origin of
man from one of a few forms, with the history
of Creation, as contained in the first chapter of
Genesis? If this Divine doubts the truth of the
Mosaic account, how does he reconcile the doctrine
of progressive development, with that of original
sin, and the consequent necessity for a Redeemer?
If man is only a superiorly-developed ape, when
in his history did he emerge from apehood into
manhood? According to Mr. Darwin, the change
must have taken immense time, and have been
most gradual, for Natura non facit sallum. Now

TRANSMUTABLE. 245

at what period, in the transitional history of the
human race does this Divine fix upon, as that
to which the Mosaic account, upon which our
religion is founded, refers?

We must have no trifling upon this subject.
By the passage I have quoted, Mr. Darwin has
opened out a much wider issue, which his inju-
dicious friends have helped to enlarge. It may
be urged, that the same argument was used against
geological discoveries. I deny the force of this
entirely. There is this difference between the
two — that while, by a different interpretation of
a few words in the first chapter of Genesis,
geology can be reconciled with Scripture; yet, if
Mr. Darwin 's theory is true, the whole Mosaic
account of creation must be false, and thus a
blow is struck at the root of religion itself. If
Mr. Darwin, or his friend, says, ubut man was
one of my original forms specially created in the
beginning of time," he is equally opposed by
Scripture and geology, both of which define his
special creation at the same time.

If no other species was specially created, it
would be most unwise to say that man was ; and
nothing can be further from the meaning of the
Darwinian school than this, as was clearly evi-
denced by the line of argument taken by Professor
Huxley, at Oxford, in opposition to Professor
Owen, in order to prove that the anatomical
difference was greater between the highest and
lowest monkey, than between the highest ape
and man.

246 SPECIES NOT

I repeat again, there must be no trifling with
tli is subject. The followers of Mr. Darwin are,
it is clear from the discussion at Oxford, each
of them in turn desirous of throwing down the
pillars, upon which the theory is built. Mr.
Huxley does not consider that it depends so much
upon the transmutation of species, as how species
become permanent, both of which opinions arc
utterly opposed to the teaching of Mr. Darwin's
book. Mr. Lubbock accepts the theory, but thinks
time has nothing to do with it; whereas Mr.
Darwin, not satisfied with two billions and two
hundred million years, is obliged to imagine a
world equally long at least before this, and to believe
in a future of the same magnitude; while Dr.
Hooker denies that the conversion of a bear into
a whale, a fish into a flying squirrel, or a bus-
tard into an ostrich, are instances of transmutation
of species!

Surely we do not require that ugrasp of in-
tellect," alluded to in the "Gardener's Chronicle,"
by the gentleman who lays claim to a prior
enunciation of the natural selection theory, to
understand a system built upon a bed of sand.
and with materials which are tumbling about the
ears of those, who are trying to strengthen the
tottering structure !

In addition to the report of the Oxford Meeting,
T have also just seen (July 24th.,) the number
of "The Quarterly Review," for July. It is sin-
gular that the writer of this powerful article
should have taken the same line of argument as

TRANSMUTABLE. 247

is adopted in this work, using, in many places,
the same quotations. It gives me the greatest
pleasure to add the high testimony of the Quar-
terly, to the correctness of the line of argument
I have chosen, in objecting to Mr. Darwin's
book, in proof of which I copy the following
quotations : —

On Transmutation. — "We think it difficult to
find a theory fuller of assumptions; and of as-
sumptions not grounded upon alleged facts in
nature, but which are absolutely opposed to all
the facts we have been able to observe." — (Page
237.)

On the geological part of the theory.—

"Now if the geologist can shew clear proofs
of continuous deposit, and yet many distinct
plants and animals in the succeeding formations,
what becomes of that immense lapse of ages,
which should transform the palaeozoic permian
type into the distinct secondary or triassic form ?
All such links are absolutely wanting, even in
these tracts, and in many others, where the com-
formable, and gradual transitions between forma-
tions, proves that there is between them no break,
and where everything indicates quite physical
transition, and which yet contain utterly different
remains. How then can we account for such
distinct forms of life in the quietly succeeding
formations, except by distinct creations?" — (Page
242.)

Again. — "Now it is proved by Sir R. Mur-
chison, and admitted by all geologists, that we

248 SPECIES NOT

possess these earlier formations, (pre-silurian,)
stretching over vast extents perfectly unaltered,

and exhibiting no signs of life If these forms

of life had existed, they must have been found.
Even Mr. Darwin shrinks from the deadly gripe
of this argument." — (Page 245.)

On the sterility of hybrids. —

uBut though this objection (the geological one)
is that which is rated highest by himself, there
is another which appears to us in some respects
stronger still, and to which we deem Mr. Dar-
win's answers equally insufficient — we mean the
law of sterility affixed to hybridism. If it were
possible to proclaim more distinctly, by one pro-
vision than another, that the difference between
various species was a law of creation, and not,
as4 the transmutationists maintain, an ever-varying
accident, it would surely be by the interposing
such a bar to change, as that which now exists
in the universal fruitlessness, which is the result
of all known mixtures of animals specially dis-
tinct How then does Mr. Darwin dispose of

this apparently impassible barrier of nature against
the transmutation theory?

He urges that it depends not upon any great
law of life, but mainly, first, on the early death
of the embryo, or, secondly, upon the imperfection
of the reproductive system in the male offspring.
How he conceives this to be an answer to the
difficulty, it is beyond our power to conceive.
We can hardly imagine any clearer way of stating
the mode in which a universal law, if it existed,

TRANSMUTABLE. 24D

must act, than that in which he describes it to
disprove its existence." — (Pages 245-6.)

On the whole theory. —

U0n what then is the new theory based?
We say it with unfeigned regret, in dealing with
such a man as Mr. Darwin, on the merest hy-
pothesis, supported by the most unbounded as-
sumptions. " — (Page 248.)

"In the name of all true philosophy, we

protest against such a mode of dealing with
nature, as utterly dishonourable to all natural
science, as reducing it from its present lofty level,
of being one of the noblest trainers of man's
intellect, and instructors of his mind, to being
a mere idle play of the fancy without, the basis
of fact, or the discipline of observation." — (Page
250.)

On the question of creation of organized beings,
as "eggs, or seed, or full-grown? and in the case
of mammals, were they created bearing the false
mark of nourishment from their mothers' wombs?"
—(Darwin, 483.)

To these questions we have the following fine
answer : —

"It is inherent in the idea of the creation of
beings, which are to reproduce their like by
natural succession; for in such a world, place
the beginning where you will, that beginning
must contain the apparent history of a past,
which existed only in the mind of the Creator.

If, with Mr. Darwin, you consider man to

be an improved ape, you only carry the difficulty

250 SPECIES NOT

up from the first man to the first ape; if, with
Mr. Darwin, in violation of all observations, you
break the barrier between the classes of vegetable
and animal life, and suppose every animal to be
an improved vegetable, you do but carry your
difficulty with you into the vegetable world; for
how could there have been seeds, if there had
been no plants to seed them? and if you carry
up your thoughts through the vista of the Dar-
winian eternity, up to the primaeval fungus, still
the primaeval fungus must have had a humus,
from which to draw into its venerable vessels,
the nourishment of its archetypal existence, and
that humus must itself be a 'false mark' of a
pre-existing vegetation." — (Page 253.)

On the religious question, this able reviewer
remarks, "The words graven on the everlasting
rocks, are the words of God, and they are graven
by His hand. No more can they contradict His
word, written in His book, than could the words
of the old covenant, graven by His hand on the
stony tables, contradict the writings of His hand
in the volume of the new dispensation. There
may be to man difficulty in reconciling all the
utterances of the two voices. But what of that?
He has learned already that here he knows only
in part, and that the day of reconciling all ap-
parent contradictions, between what must agree
is nigh at hand."— (Page 257.)

"Few things have more deeply injured the
cause of religion, than the busy, fussy energy
with which men, narrow and feeble alike in faith

TRANSMUTABLE. 251

and in science, have bustled forth to reconcile
all new discoveries in physics with the word of
inspiration. For it continually happens that some
larger collection of facts, or some wider view of
the phenomena of nature, alter the whole philoso-
phic scheme; whilst revelation has been committed
to declare an absolute agreement, with what turns
out after all to have been a misconception, or an
error. We cannot, therefore, consent to test the
truth of natural science by the word of revela-
tion. But this does not make it the less important
to point out, on scientific grounds, scientific er-
rors, when those errors tend to limit God's glory
in creation, or to gainsay the revealed relations
of that creation to Himself.

To both these classes of error, though we doubt
not quite unintentionally on his part, we think
that Mr. Darwin's speculations directly tend." —
(Page 257.)

I make no apology for introducing the above
extracts from this masterly review into this work.
They are written in a truly scientific spirit, and
with a high-minded feeling and tone, which in
this country at least is recognised as the evidence
of deep thought, and as a true view of the relations
of science to our conceptions of truth, and the rever-
ence with which we instinctively regard the marks
of a great and infinite mind in all created things.

There is, however, one part of the article in
this review, upon which I have a word or two
to offer. The reviewer is extremely delighted
with Mr. Darwin's description of the ants' visit

252 SPECIES NOT

to the camp of the aphides, and stimulating
these insects with their antennae, by which it is
assumed they are made to excrete honey-dew,
upon which the ants feed. The reviewer will
perhaps be surprised to hear that the whole
statement is founded upon one of those erroneous
observations which too often find their way into
works upon natural history. Anyone who will
take the trouble of making the observation with
care for himself, will be convinced of the fol-
lowing facts: — 1st. — That the excretion of honey-
dew goes on pari passu with the amount of
juice obtained by the aphis from the plant upon
which it feeds. 2nd. — This excretion is entirely
independent of any irritation caused by the an-
tennas of the ants. 3rd. — The ants have no
intention by the movement of their antenna? of
exciting the aphides to excrete; such motion
being always observed in the ant when it is
eagerly expecting food, whether it be the excre-
ment of the aphis, or sugar placed by the
observer.

The experiment is very easily performed. Get
if possible, an apricot or peach, or some round
fruit covered with aphides, and place it under
a glass on a sheet of white paper. In two hours
there will be a ring of glistening honey-dew on
the paper all round the fruit, while, at the same
time, the natural excretion of the insect will be
going on. Now introduce one or two ants. At
first they will be considerably frightened, instead
of trembling with watery mouths for the expected

TRANSMUTABLE. 253

feast. Presently, however, they will begin to
feed upon the honey-dew, moving their antennae
with great rapidity; and during the time they
are running, about the aphides go on excreting
as usual, — but neither more or less. Try the
same experiment with a similar fruit covered
with sugar, and the antennae of the ants will
move just as fast. If the excretion does not
fall off the fruit or leaf, it sinks down among
the flock, and is lost to sight, producing there
the well-known honey- dew, which is the nidus
of fungi, and hence of many well-known diseases.
The supposition that the aphis will wait for
several hours to perform a natural excretion,
and that either they expect to be tickled by
the antennae of ants, or that the ants have the
slightest intention of doing anything of the kind,
is a delusion which anyone may dispel for him-
self by a very simple observation.

I have now brought the remarks which I have
to offer upon this book, to a close. The subject
is far from being exhausted, but I think the
time is not far off when everybody will have had
enough of "natural selection."

I can truly say, that I am sorry that the book
was ever written, for its effect must be to di-
minish the fame of its author, and to unsettle
the mind of the public about scientific pursuits.
The "Vestiges," to say the least, attributed the
alteration of species to a distinct act of the Di-
vine will. Lamarck gave us something by which
we could carry on the changes with the theory.

254 SPECIES NOT

But "natural selection" does neither. It attributes
everything to chance. An imaginary power takes
the place of design; a series of imaginary laws,
which have no congruity, take the place of the
laws of life; wild speculation is made to supersede
proof, and the proof that is tendered is founded
upon a false interpretation of facts, or facts have
been imagined to replace realities. From beginning
to end the book is a cheerless, gloomy narrative.
It destroys every vestige of the beautiful from
the mind, without replacing it with even a plau-
sible or intelligent theory. It is the great mistake
of the age in which we live, and I hope, for his
own sake, and for those whose principles it is
calculated to unsettle, that not only will the
greater work, with which we are threatened, never
see the light, but that this will be speedily
withdrawn from circulation.

Perhaps, however, I am mistaken as to the
effect which the opinions of such a book as this
may have upon the public mind. We live in a
remarkable age. We are told that, as a nation,
we are prosperous above all others in the world ;
that we are increasing in knowledge as a people;
that new discoveries in science and art are daily
proving the superiority of reason over the instinct,
which abiding, as it was first imprinted in the
nature of the animal, like the beaver, builds
its house as did the first betiver the world ever
>aw; or, like the gorilla, slings his hammock in
the trees of Africa, the same imperfect roofless
< I welling it has ever made. All this is true, but

TRANSMUTABLE. 255

there is one feature of the present age which
must not be disregarded, or held lightly, by those
who think at all about the destinies of a country
favoured above all others in the world, and that
is, its national indifference.

It cannot be denied that such a feeling seems
to have crept in with our prosperity, and has
mingled itself with our greatest national interests.
We see it every day in the progress of political
or secular events. Are -we to permit such a state
of apathy to find us unmoved, while the great
charm which gilds our appreciation of the beau-
tiful in nature is being swept away? NAre we
to look with calmness, or indifference, or acqui-
escence, on doctrines which rob life of that by
which its loftiest and noblest aspirations are sus-
tained? Are we to look on with coldness, while
the daily Providence of God in Creation, and
even His existence there, are denied? '{

No, I cannot believe this! for the mountain
top, in its gloomy grandeur, shall still invoke its
living testimony, and the eagle and the vulture
shall there proclaim the design, which formed and
adapted them to their home and position in the
scale of being. The great deep shall have its
mighty whale, or its fairy nautilus, speaking of
the wisdom of its Maker.

The forest or the beetling rock shall still be
alive with the hum of insects, or the carol of
the bird. And man shall still walk through the
scenes made by design for him and for his happi-
ness, and as he looks into that vast assemblage

256 SPECIES NOT

of wondrous beauty, and as he contemplates the
riches which surround him, he shall rise far above
the cold and Platonic prejudices of a degraded
Pantheism. He shall think with unclouded reason
as his monitor; and in every living thing, whether
the flower that sends its perfume into the air, and
which gladdens him with the harmonious beauty
of its colours; — whether the insect which lives
its brief day in the summer sun, or the bird
which rings through the grove its song of melody ;
or still more in the contemplation of that crowning
intellect, which marks man as the head of cre-
ated things — in all these he shall continue to see
a special creation, an adaptive, thoughtful Design,
an immutable species, and a Great First Cause.

TU E END.

B, fAWCKlT, E.XOUAYLU AND I KINTtli, KAST-LODOE, DKIFHKL1).

ERRATA.

Page 3, 12th. line, for "tells him," read "tells us."

Page' 14, 6th. line, dele semicolon, and insert comma after

"creation."

Page 16, last line, for "imaginable," read "unimaginable."
Page 35, 5th. line from bottom, read "cattle are descended,"

and 3rd line, read "thinks are descended."
Page 39 et seq., for "Woollaston," read "Wollaston."
Page 83, for "Comptes Rendues," read "Comptes Rendus."
Page 114, 8th. line, for "humeras," read "humerus."
Page 145, 10th. line from bottom, for "then," read "than."
Page 151, 3rd. paragraph, 2nd. line, transfer the comma after

"uses" to the following word.
Page 155, 6th. line, full stop after "grub."
Page 157, llth line from bottom, read *'as those of the arm."
Page 178. Dr. Maclean informs me that the larva of A. iris

does not enclose itself in, but that it reposes on a web.