islands' (388). So that the door is shut, and there we must leave it.

For the rest of the argument the result is equally infelicitous, as these confessions indicate undoubtedly many cases occur in which we cannot explain how the same species has passed from one point to another.' 'It would be hopelessly tedious to discuss all the exceptional cases of the same species now living at distant and separated points; nor do I for a moment pretend that any explanation could be offered of many such cases' (383-4).

The Theory therefore fails to explain the very point which it undertook to interpret; and if the alternative really be a miracle,' then certainly Natural Selection has not, in this case, averted that alternative. In his anxiety to exclude a miracle, Mr Darwin has locked himself in, and cannot get out.

But there is still another point for consideration in this system, of which Mr Darwin has said something, and on which we shall venture to add a few remarks, first placing his words before the reader. When cases of diversified and changed habits occur, it would be easy for Natural Selection to fit the animal for its changed habits, or exclusively for one of its several different habits. But it is difficult 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. Of cases of changed habits it will suffice merely to allude to that of the many British insects which now feed on exotic plants, or exclusively on artificial substances. Of diversified habits, innumerable instances could be given. I have often watched a tyrant fly-catcher (saurophagus sulphur

atus) in South America, hovering over one spot and then proceeding to another, like a kestrel, and at other times. standing stationary on the margin of the water, and then darting like a kingfisher on a fish. In our own country the larger titmouse may be seen climbing branches, almost like a creeper; it often, like a shrike, kills small birds by blows on the head; and I have many times seen and heard it hammering the seeds of the yew on the branch, and thus breaking them like a nuthatch. In North* America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects in the water' (202).

We quite agree with the Author in acknowledging the difficulty of this question, but that it is immaterial we cannot at all concede. If transformations are to take place in Nature, and animals are to become new creatures, it must be a very important point to determine whether the change first takes place in the structure of the animal, or in its habits. If a land-animal is about to turn into a fish, or a fish into a land-animal, or if a wingless animal is about to assume wings (all cases considered quite possible in the Theory, if indeed they are not more properly speaking historical facts), it must be deeply interesting to know whether the inclination to change precedes the altered structure, or vice versa.

If a bear were determined to live in the depths of the sea, before his new structure enabled him to do so, he would

This is the celebrated passage which in the first edition had an additional sentence now suppressed: 'I 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.' In truth the passage without this conclusion is incomplete; for in the commencement it is stated that it is easy for Natural Selection to fit the animal for its changed habits.

find he had made a very serious mistake, and that Natural Selection had induced him to make a change, not at all to his advantage. But if, on the other hand, he were to wait till his new marine organization, sufficiently developed, might enable him to frequent the deep unfathomed caves of ocean,' then he would get on very scurvily as a bear, and be reduced to short commons in the mountains and forests. An animal half a bear and half a whale would be a curious sight, or one-third bear and two-thirds whale, or any other proportion you choose, would be beyond our powers of imagination; and the middle state of change for all transforming animals must be their struggle for life,' indeed, though not in the sense that Mr Darwin intends it. This difficulty indeed is supposed to be lessened by imagining a very long series of new animals intermediate between the bear and the whale, and each new generation, in a vast length of time, gradually becoming more and more aquatic in tastes and habits, till from an amphibious animal a true whale was at last elaborated. This hypothesis, nearly as respectable as an ordinary Fairy tale, must be left as it is, for it needs no comment, but still the question would remain to be answered, does modification of structure' precede habit, or habit go before modification. Who shall answer this question? Lamarck gives the precedence to habit; and according to his theory, effort and inclination produce a change in organization: but with either, or with all the expositors of this school, this is certain, that there never was a design on the part of the Creator to produce a whale or any other animal, in order to sustain any predetermined character in Nature; no land-animal ever schemed to become a whale, nor did any fish devise the means of living in the water, nor did any Creative Intel

lect ever imagine the form, life, and attributes of any animal-organized beings are as they are by accidental modifications, of which Natural Selection has taken advantage.

But in the passage before us Mr Darwin intimates that if an animal has more than one habit, if it allows itself two or more occupations, or indulges in more than one amusement, this is to be considered as indicative of an approaching change of organization: thus the tyrant fly-catcher is probably advancing to the kingfisher, and it is doubtful whether the titmouse will be changed into a creeper, a shrike, or a nuthatch.

We could suggest similar suspicious circumstances: the reindeer is known occasionally to devour the hamser, an intelligible indication of his change some day into a carnivorous animal; and the dog now and then eats grass, a not improbable hint that he in due time may become a graminivorous animal, and take his place in some new development of the ovine race, when the struggle for existence will simultaneously exterminate all the existing breeds of sheep.

We ourselves have seen buffalos immersed in the water, and keeping their muzzles just above the stream, for hours together; and though this did not suggest to us the probability of their transformation into any great fish, yet, possibly, Natural Selection had her eye upon them, and was slowly bringing about the change that is to be!

Perhaps this interesting question has been already settled for us by Shakespeare, who, as he rarely missed any subject, seems not to have overlooked the possibilities of Natural Selection. In the Midsummer's Night's Dream he first gives the ass's head to Bottom, and then represents Bottom as

manifesting asinine inclinations. 'Methinks I have a great desire for a pottle of hay; good hay, sweet hay hath no fellow.' The rule then, after all, seems to be that when a man is turned into an ass he then begins to have asinine thoughts. In other words, the structure precedes the habit.

Now, in discussing all these wonders, it is to be remembered that the whole system is proposed as a creed, and that belief, and the necessity of belief in things which do not appear, is very frequently urged by the learned author. How often, how very often, does he make use of the expression, I see no difficulty in believing,' and almost always when the thing to be believed is most startling, and we may add too, impossible: credo quia impossibile est is a maxim greatly needed in this Theory, and we are again and again reminded that we must believe certain propositions, without expecting any proof.

In the great principle of all, Transformation, this is insisted on as a sine quá non. In order that any great amount of modification should in the course of time be produced, it is necessary to believe that when a variety has once arisen, it again varies, after perhaps a long interval of time, and that its varieties, if favourable, are again produced, and so onwards' (89).

This, in fact, amounts to taking the whole Theory on credit. If we believe this, we believe, of course, all the rest; proofs we cannot have, and therefore we must accept that which is offered us, assertion as a substitute for proof; a very easy method, doubtless, of establishing a new system, but quite unique in a scientific inquiry.

But this method is again and again proposed to us: 'We may account for the distinctness of birds from all other