certainly ever since the wandering Ulysses | tion, for his own use and pleasure," and then returned to Ithaca, and of which it has been to draw from the changes introduced amongst man's interest to obtain every variation domesticated animals this caution for natuwhich he could extract out of the original ralists: "May they not learn a lesson of caution when they deride the idea of species stock. The result is every day before us. in a state of nature being lineal descendants We all know the vast difference, which of other species ? "-P. 29. strikes the dullest eye, between, for instance, the short bandy-legged snub-nosed bull-dog, and the almost aërial Italian greyhound. Here again the experiment of variation by selection has been well-nigh tried out. And with what results? Here again with an absolute absence of the first dawns of any variety which could by its own unlimited prolongation constitute a specific difference. Again there is perfect freedom and fertility of interbreeding; again a continual tendency to revert to the common type; again, even in the most apparently dissimilar specimens, a really specific agreement. Hear what Professor Owen says on this point :

"No species of animal has been subject to such decisive experiments, continued through so many generations, 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 intelligence, as the dog; and no domestic animal manifests so great a range of variety in regard to general size, to color and character of hair, and to the form of the head, as it is affected by different proportions of the cranium and face, and by inter-muscular crests superadded 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. Note also how unerringly and plainly the extremest varieties of the dog-kind recognize their own specific relationship. How differently does the giant Newfoundland behave to the dwarf pug on a casual rencontre, from the way in which either of them would treat a jackal, a wolf, or a fox. The dumb animal might teach the philosopher that unity of kind or of species is discoverable under the strangest mask of variation."*

Nor let our readers forget over how large a lapse of time our opportunities of observation extend. From the early Egyptian habit of embalming, we know that for four thousand years at least the species of our own domestic animals, the cat, the dog, and others, has remained absolutely unaltered. Yet it is in the face of such facts as these that Mr. Darwin ventures, first, to declare that "new races of animals and plants are produced under domestication by man's methodical and unconscious power of selec

*Owen's "Classification of Mammalia," p. 100,

Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? why should she become a selector of varieties ? Because, most ingeniously argues Mr. Darwin, in the struggle for life, if any variety favorable to the individual were developed, that individual would have a better chance in the battle of life, would assert more proudly his own place, and, handing on his peculiarity to his descendants, would become the progenitor of an improved race; and so a variety would have grown into a species.

We think it difficult to find a theory fuller of assumptions; and of assumptions not grounded upon alleged facts in nature, but which are absolutely opposed to all the facts Iwe have been able to observe.

tions of which we have proof under domesti1. We have already shown that the variacation have never, under the longest and most continued system of selections we have known, laid the first foundation of a specific difference, but have always tended to relapse, and not to accumulated and fixed persist

ence.

But, 2ndly, all these variations have the essential characteristics of monstrosity about them; and not one of them has the character which Mr. Darwin repeatedly reminds us is the only one which nature can select, viz. of being an advantage to the selected individual in the battle of life, i.e. an improvement upon the normal type by raising some possible excellence within the species, but to individual of the species not to the highest some excellence above it. So far from this, every variation introduced by man is for the animal. Correlation is so certainly the man's advantage, not for the advantage of law of all animal existence that man can only develop one part by the sacrifice of another. The bull-dog gains in strength and swiftness but loses in strength. Even the loses in swiftness; the greyhound gains in English race-horse loses much which would enable it in the battle of life to compete with its rougher ancestor. So too with our prize

cattle. Their greater tendency to an earlier | were happening, that there should be no accumulation of meat and fat is counter-proof of their occurrence; yet never have balanced, as is well known, by loss of robust the longing observations of Mr. Darwin and⚫ health, fertility, and of power of yielding the transmutationists found one such inmilk, in proportion to their special develop- stance to establish their theory, and this alment in the direction which man's use of though the shades between one class and them as food requires. There is not a another are often most lightly marked. For shadow of ground for saying that man's va- there are creatures which occupy a doubtful riations ever improve the typical character post between the animal and vegetable kingof the animal as an animal; they do but by doms-half-notes in the great scale of nasome monstrous development make it more ture's harmony. Is it credible that all fauseful to himself; and hence it is that na- vorable varieties of turnips are tending to ture, according to her universal law with become men, and yet that the closest micromonstrosities, is ever tending to obliterate scopic observation has never detected the the deviation and to return to the type. faintest tendency in the highest of the Alga to improve into the very lowest Zoophyte?

The applied argument then, from variation under domestication, fails utterly. But fur- Again, we have not only the existing ther, what does observation say as to the tribes of animals out of which to cull, if occurrence of a single instance of such fa- possible, the instances which the transmutavorable variation? Men have for thousands tionists require to make their theory defenof years been conversant as hunters and other sible consistently with the simplest laws of rough naturalists with animals of every class. inductive science, but we have in the earth Has any one such instance ever been dis- beneath us a vast museum of the forms covered? We fearlessly assert not one. which have preceded us. Over so vast a Variations have been found: rodents whose period of time does Mr. Darwin extend this teeth have grown abnormally; animals of collection that he finds reasons for believing various classes of which the eyes, from the that "it is not improbable that a longer peabsence of light in their dwellings, have riod than three hundred million years has been obscured and obliterated; but not one elapsed since the latter part of the secondary which has tended to raise the individual in (geological) period" alone. (p. 287.) Here the struggle of life above the typical condi- surely at last we must find the missing links tions of its own species. Mr. Darwin him- of that vast chain of innumerable and sepself allows that he finds none; and accounts arately imperceptible variations, which has for their absence in existing fauna only by convinced the inquirer into Nature's unthe suggestion, that, in the competition be- doubted facts of the truth of the transmutween the less improved parent-form and tation theory. But no such thing. The the improved successor, the parent will have links are wholly wanting, and the multiplicyielded in the strife in order to make room ity of these facts and their absolute rebelfor the successor; and so "both the parent lion against Mr. Darwin's theory is perhaps and all the transitional varieties will gener- his chief difficulty. Here is his own stateally have been exterminated by the very ment of it, and his mode of meeting it :— process of formation and perfection of the "Why then is not every geological formation new form" (p. 172)-a most unsatisfactory and stratum full of such intermediate links? answer as it seems to us; for why-since Geology assuredly does not reveal any such if this is nature's law these innumerable finely graduated organic chain; and this, perchanges must be daily occurring-should haps, is the most obvious and gravest objection there never be any one producible proof of their existence ?

Here then again, when subjected to the stern Baconian law of the observation of facts, the theory breaks down utterly; no natural variations from the specific type favorable to the individual from which nature is to select can anywhere be found.

which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.”—P. 280.

This "Imperfection of the Geological Record," and the " Geological Succession," are the subjects of two labored and ingenious chapters, in which he tries, as we think utterly in vain, to break down the unansweraBut once more. If these transmutations ble refutation which is given to his theory were actually occurring, must there not, in by the testimony of the rocks. He treats some part of the great economy of nature the subject thus:-1. He affirms that only round us, be somewhere at least some in- a small portion of the globe has been exstance to be quoted of the accomplishment plored with care. 2. He extends at will to of the change? With many of the lower new and hitherto unsuggested myriads of forms of animals, life is so short and gon-years the times which have elapsed between erations so rapid in their succession that it successive formations in order to account for would be all but impossible, if such changes the utter absence of every thing like a suc

cession of ascertainable variations in the successive inhabitants of the earth. How he deals in these suggestions with time, filling in or striking out a few millions of years at pleasure, the following comprehensive sentence may show :

"At this rate, on the above data, the denudation of the Weald must have required 306,662,400 years, or say three hundred million years. But perhaps it would be safer to allow two or three inches per century, and this would reduce the number of years to one hundred and fifty or one hundred million years."-P. 287.

As these calculations concerning the general duration of formations, and specially concerning the Weald, are highly characteristic of the whole " argument," it may be worth while to submit them to a somewhat closer examination.

all superficial appearances was therefore most probably the direct result of the catastrophe, and the countless ages of Darwin were, in all probability, at the longest, nothing more than a few months or years of our time.

almost in the same manner as does the vain

denudation (p 287) appears to us a similar The whole argument as to the Wealden exaggeration. Granting that rocky coasts are very slowly worn away by the present sea, the application of this view to the north and south coasts of the valley of the Weald, i.e. to the escarpments of the North and what shadow of proof is there that these South Downs, is entirely untenable. For chalk escarpments have been worn down inch by inch by the erosion of the waves of a former sea? It may be said to have been demonstrated by that great practical obMr. D. then argues (pp. 285, 286) that Murchison, that, inasmuch as there is no server and philosophical geologist Sir R. "faults" proclaim the vastness of these durations. To establish this, he supposes that trace of rounded water-worn pebbles nor the result of a great fracture was the severing shingles in any portion of the Weald (though of strata once continuous, so as to throw there were plenty on the slopes without), the them relatively a thousand feet apart from sea never could have so acted along these their original position, and thus form a cliff escarpments as on a shore, and hence the which stood up vertically on one side of that whole of the basis of the reasoning, about dislocation; and so he imagines that countthe three hundred million of years for the less ages must have elapsed, according to the denudation of the cretaceous and subjacent present waste of land, to account for the deposits, is itself washed away at once. wearing down of these outlines, so as to Darwin trusts to establish his vast lapses of But not only do the facts to which Mr. have left (as is often the case) no trace of the great dislocation upon the present surface of years, which, he says, "impress his mind the land. But, with hardly an exception, endeavor to grapple with the idea of Eterevery sound geologist would repudiate as a "petitio principii" this whole method of rea-nity" (p. 285), not only do these give him soning; for though a few geologists would explain these great dislocations on the hypoththesis of intermittent successive movements severally of small amount, yet in the judgment of far the larger number, and the more judicious of those who have made geology their study, they were undoubtedly the result of sudden movements, produced by internal efforts of central heat and of gas to escape, and were infinitely more intense and spasmodic (catastrophe if you will) than any of those similiar causes which in a minor way, now produce our earthquakes and oscillations of the surface to the extent of a few feet only. Hence these great breaks and fractures were of such a nature as to render it impossible that any cliff should, at the period of their formation, have stood up on one side of the fracture. The very movement, accompanied as it must have been by translation of vast masses of water sweeping away the rubbish, may, on the instant, have almost entirely smoothed down the ruptured fragments; the more so, as most of these great dislocations are believed to have taken place under the sea. The flattening down of

the same power of supposing the progress the commencement, nor the progress, nor of changes, of which we have found neither the record, as ancient geographers allowed themselves, when they speculated upon the their shoulders in the unreached recesses of forms of men whose heads grew beneath Africa,-but when, passing from these unceeds to deal with the absence of all record limited terms for change to work in, he proof the changes themselves, the plainest geological facts again disprove his assumptions.

For here he assumes that there are everywhere vast gaps (p. 302) between successive formations, which might, if they were filled up, furnish instances of all the many gradations required by his theory, and also that the past condition of the earth made the preservation of such specimens improbable. Mr. Darwin quotes (p. 289) Sir R. MurchiΤο prove the existence of these wide gaps, son's great work on "Russia; " but he appears to us to quote it incorrectly, for we understand it to say that there is abundant

*See "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," London.

evidence that in that drift-covered region | are, however, geologists who maintain that this there are many evidences of the transition is an assumption based upon a partial knowlfrom the Devonian into the Carboniferous edge of the facts. era in Palæozoic life, and also from the old Aralo-Caspian, or brackish water condition of tertiary times into present oceanic life; and that if all the rocks of Russia could be uncovered and the drift removed, we might discover many more of these transitions. In fact, although the geological record is often broken, we already know of many unbroken and perfect transitions between the Cambrian and Silurian, between the Silurian and Devonian, between the Devonian and Carboniferous, if not between the latter and the Permian.

"In the paleozoic strata, which, from their extent and depth, indicate, in the earth's existence as a seat of organic life, a period as prolonged as that which has followed their deposition, no trace of mammals has been observed. It may be conceded that, were mammals peculiar to dry land, such negative evidence would weigh little in producing conviction of their non-existence during the Silurian and Devonian æons, because the explored parts of such strata have been deposited from an occan, and the chance of finding a terrestrial and air-breathing creature's remains in oceanic deposits is very remote. But in the present state of the warm-blooded, airAgain, there is an absolute unbroken cies are represented by such numerous and breathing, viviparous class, no genera and spe. physical connection in Germany between widely dispersed individuals as those of the orthe Permian and the Trias, and yet an en-der Cetacca, which, under the guise of fishes, tire separation of animals, and so on in Sec- dwell, and can only live, in the ocean. ondary and Tertiary deposits. "In all cetacea the skeleton is well ossified,

creatures of which we have yet gained cogniz ance. The hugest ichthyosaur, iguandon, megcomparison with the modern whale of a hundred alosaur, mammoth, or megathere, is a dwarf in feet in length.

Now, if the field-geologist can show clear and the vertebræ are very numerous; the smallproofs of continuous deposit, and yet many est cetaceans would be deemed large amongst distinct plants and animals in the succeed-land-mammals, the largest surpass in bulk any ing formations, what becomes of that immense lapse of ages which should transform the Paleozoic Permian type into the entirely distinct Secondary or Triassic form? All such links are absolutely wanting even in "During the period in which we have proof these tracts, and in many others, where the that cetacea have existed, the evidence in the conformable and gradual transition between shape of bones and teeth, which latter enduring formations proves that there is between them characteristics in most of the species are peculiar no break, and where every thing indicates for their great number in the same individual, quiet physical transition, and which yet con- must have been abundantly deposited at the tain utterly different remains. How then bottom of the sea; and as cachalots, grampuses, can we account for such distinct forms of dolphins, and porpoises, are seen gambolling in life in the quietly succeeding formations ex-mains will form the most characteristic evidences ahoals in deep oceans, far from land, their recept by distinct creations ?

Mr. Darwin is compelled to admit that he finds no records in the crust of the earth to verify his assumption :

"To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer."-P. 308.

And again

"The difficulty of understanding the absence of vast piles of fossiliferous strata, which on my theory no doubt were somewhere accumulated before the Silurian epoch, is very great."-P. 309.

of vertebrate life in the strata now in course of formation at the bottom of such oceans. Accordingly, it consists with the known characteristics of the cetacean class to find the marine de

posits which fell from seas tenanted, as now, the fossil evidences of the order in vast abunwith vertebrates of that high grade, containing

dance."*

And on that subject he again maintains :—

In like manner does such negative evidence weigh with me in proof of the non-existence of marine mammals in the liassic and oolitic times. In the marine deposits of those secondary or As to the suggestion that the absence of mesozoic epochs, the evidence of vertebrates organic remains is no proof of the non-ex-marine vertebrates, is as abundant as that of airgoverning the ocean, and preying on inferior istence of the unrepresented classes, we breathing vertebrates in the tertiary strata; but would rather speak in the weighty words of in the one the fossils are exclusively of the coldProfessor Owen than employ our own :- blooded reptilian class, in the other of the warmCetiosauria, and Crocodilia played the same part blooded mammalian class. The Enaliosauria, and fulfilled similar offices in the seas from which the lias and oolites were precipitated, as the Delphinidæ and Balænidæ did in the ter*Owen "On the Classification of Mammalia,"

"The sum of the evidence which has been obtained appears to prove that the successive extinction of Amphitheria, Spalacotheria, Triconodons, and other mesozoic forms of mammals, has been followed by the introduction of much more numerous, varied, and higher-organized forms

of the class, during the tertiary periods. There Pp. 58, 59.

tiary and still do in the present seas. 'The un- life. Here we have, as nearly as it is possibiassed conclusion from both negative and posible in the nature of things to have, the abtive evidence in this matter is, that the Cetacea solute proof of a negative. If these forms succeeded and superseded the Enaliosauria. To of life had existed they must have been the mind that will not accept such conclusion, found. Even Mr. Darwin shrinks from the the stratified oolitic rocks must cease to be mon"The case," deadly gripe of this argument.

strata of North America, stretching over tracts as large as the British Isles, and conappears to us in some respects stronger taining innumerable plants and other ter- still, and to which we deem Mr. Darwin's restrial things, must have been very equally answers equally insufficient, we mean the depressed and elevated, since the very flowers law of sterility affixed to hybridism. If it and fruits of the plants of the period have were possible to proclaim more distinctly by been preserved; and if terrestrial animals one provision than another that the differabounded, why do we not see more of their ence between various species was a law of remains than this miserable little dendro-creation, and not, as the transmutationists pupa about a quarter of an inch long?