where the common pheasant's eggs are Can any permutationist pretend that expehatched under the domestic hen. How then rience gives us any reason for believing that does Mr. Darwin dispose of this apparently any change of food, however unnatural or impassable barrier of nature against the forced, ever has changed or ever could change transmutation-theory? He urges that it the one type into the other? Yet that didepends not upon any great law of life, but versity prevades the whole being of the sepamainly, first, on the early death of the em- rated classes. It does not affect only their bryo, or, secondly, upon "the common im- outward forms, as to which the merest acperfection of the reproductive system" in cidents of color or of hair may veil real rethe male offspring. How he considers this semblance under seeming difference, but it to be any answer to the difficulty it is be- pervades the nervous system, the organs of yond our power to conceive. We can hardly reproduction, the stomach, the alimentary imagine any clearer way of stating the mode canal; nay, in every blood-corpuscle which in which an universal law, if it existed, must circulates through their arteries and veins it act, than that in which he describes it, to is universally present and perpetually active. disprove its existence. But, besides this, other and insuperable difficulties beset this whole speculation. To one of these Mr. Darwin alludes (pp. 192, 193), and dismisses it with a most suspicious brevity. "The electric organs of fishes," he says, " offer another case of special difficulty," and he places as "a parallel case of difficulty the presence of luminous organs in a few insects belonging to different families and orders.

We see no possible solution on the Darwinian theory for the presence at once so marked and so exceptional of these organs. And how are they dealt with? Surely in a mode most unsatisfactory by one promulging a new theory of creation; for scarcely admitting that their presence is little else than destructive of his theory, Mr. Darwin simply remarks "that we are too ignorant to argue that no transition of any kind is possible," a solution which could of course equally make the scheme it is intended to serve compatible with any other contradiction.

It is the more important to notice this, because there is another large class of cases in which the same difficulty is present, and as to which Mr. Darwin suggests no solution. We allude to those animals which, like many snakes, possess special organs for secreting venom and for discharging it at their own proper volition. The whole set of glands, ducts, and other vessels employed for this purpose are, as any instructed comparative anatomist would tell him, so entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life and peculiar to themselves, that the derivation of these by any natural modification from progenitors which did not possess them would be a marvellous contradiction of all laws of descent with which we are familiar. And this special and unnoticed difficulty leads us on to another of still wider extent. Most of our readers know that the stomachs and whole digestive system of the carnivori are constructed upon a wholly different type from those of the graminivorous animals. Yet whence this difference, if these diverse constructions can claim a common origin?

Where, then, in the most allied forms, was the earliest commencement of diversity? or what advantage of life could alter the shape of the corpuscles into which the blood can be evaporated?

We come then to these conclusions. All the facts presented to us in the natural world tend to show that none of the variations produced in the fixed forms of animal life, when seen in its most plastic condition under domestication, give any promise of a true transmutation of species; first, from the difficulty of accumulating and fixing variations within the same species; secondly, from the fact that these variations, though most serviceable for man, have no tendency to improve the individual beyond the standard of his own specific type, and so to afford matter, even if they were infinitely produced, for the supposed power of natural selection on which to work; whilst all variations from the mixture of species are barred by the inexorable law of hybrid sterility. Further, the embalmed records of three thousand years show that there has been no beginning of transmutation in the species of our most familiar domesticated animals; and beyond this, that in the countless tribes of animal life around us, down to its lowest and most variable species, no one has ever discovered a single instance of such transmutation being now in prospect; no new organ has ever been known to be developed-no new natural instinct to be formed—whilst, finally, in the vast museum of departed animal life which the strata of the earth imbed for our examination, whilst they contain far too complete a representation of the past to be set aside as a mere imperfect record, yet afford no one instance of any such change as having ever been in progress, or give us anywhere the missing links of the assumed chain, or the remains which would enable now existing variations, by gradual approximations, to shade off into unity.

On what then is the new theory based? We say it with unfeigned regret, in dealing with such a man as Mr. Darwin, on the

"For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an air-breathing lung."-P.mestic breeds are descended from different

with nature, as utterly dishonorable to all natural science, as reducing it from its present lofty level as 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. In the " Arabian Nights" we are not offended as at an impossibility when Amina sprinkles her husband with water and transforms him into a dog, but we cannot open the august doors of the venerable temple of scientific truth to the genii and magicians of romance. We plead guilty to Mr. Darwin's imputation that

"the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps."-P. 481.

In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested by the imagination, but the steps of which we cannot see, is the true spirit of philosophy.

"Analysis," says Professor Sedgwick, "consists in making experiments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusions but such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths; for hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy."*

Together with this large license of assumption we notice in this book several instances of receiving as facts whatever seems to bear out the theory upon the slightest evidence, and rejecting summarily others, merely because they are fatal to it. We grieve to charge upon Mr. Darwin this freedom in handling facts, but truth extorts it from us. That the loose statements and unfounded speculations of this book should come from the author of the monograms on Cirripedes, and the writer, in the natural history of the voyage of the "Beagle," of the paper on the coral reefs, is indeed a sad warning how far the love of a theory may seduce even a firstrate naturalist from the very articles of his creed.

This treatment of facts is followed up by another favorite line of argument, namely, that by this hypothesis difficulties otherwise Such passages

inextricable are solved.
abound. Take a few, selected almost at
random, to illustrate what we mean :-
"How inexplicable are these facts on the
ordinary view of creation!"-P. 436.

"Such facts as the presence of peculiar species of bats and the absence of other mammals on oceanic islands are utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation."Pp. 477-8.

"It must be admitted that these facts receive no explanation on the theory of creation."-P. 478.

"The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation."-Pp.

398-9.

The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think, unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his magician's rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during which certain forms of animal life prevailed, is gathered up into a point, whilst an unlim- Now what can be more simply reconcilaited expanse of years, impressing his mind ble with that theory than Mr. Darwin's own with a sense of eternity, is suddenly inter-account of the mode in which the migration posed between that and the next series, of animal life from one distant region to anthough geology proclaims the transition to other is continually accomplished? have been one of gentle and, it may be, swift Take another of these suggestions :accomplishment. All this too is made the more startling because it is used to meet the objections drawn from facts. "We see none of your works," says the observer of nature; "we see no beginnings of the portentous change; we see plainly beings of another order in creation, but we find amongst them no tendencies to these altered organisms." "True," says the great magician, with a calmness no difficulty derived from the obstinacy of facts can disturb; "true, but remember the effect of time. Throw in a few hundreds of millions of years more or less, and why should not all these changes be possible, and, if possible, why may I not assume them to be real ?"

"A Discourse on the Studies of the University," by A. Sedgwick, p 102.

"It is inexplicable, on the theory of creation, why a part developed in a very unusual manner in any one species of a genus, and therefore, as we may naturally infer, of great importance to the species, should be eminently liable to variation."-P. 474.

Why "inexplicable"? Such a liability to variation might most naturally be expected in the part "unusually developed," because unusual development is of the nature of a monstrosity, and monsters are always tending to relapse into likeness to the normal type. Yet this argument is one on which he mainly relies to establish his theory, for he sums all up in this triumphant inference:

"I cannot believe that a false theory would

explain, as it seems to me that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large classes of facts above specified."-P. 480.

of

make the works of God a mere mockery and deception; " and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is gone when he refers the stripes Now, as to all this, we deny, first, that to his hypothetical thousands on thousands many of these difficulties are inexplicable years removed progenitor. But how is on any other supposition." Of the greatest his difficulty really affected? for why is the of them (128, 194) we shall have to speak striping of one species a less real difficulty before we conclude. We will here touch than the striping of many? only on one of those which are continually reappearing in Mr. Darwin's pages, in order to illustrate his mode of dealing with them. He finds, then, one of these "inexplicable difficulties" in the fact, that the young of the blackbird, instead of resembling the adult in the color of its plumage, is like the young of many other birds spotted, and triumphantly declaring that

"No one will suppose that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to these animals, or are related to the conditions to which they are exposed."-Pp. 439-40—

he draws from them one of his strongest arguments for this alleged community of descent. Yet what is more certain to every observant field naturalist than that this alleged uselessness of coloring is one of the greatest protections to the young bird, imperfect in its flight, perching on every spray, sitting unwarily on every bush through which the rays of sunshine dapple every bough to the color of its own plumage, and so give it a facility of escape which it would utterly want if it bore the marked and prominent colors, the beauty of which the adult bird needs to recommend him to his mate, and can safely bear with his increased habits of vigilance and power of wing?

Another instance of this want of fairness, to which we must call the attention of our readers, because it too often recurs, is contained in the following question :—

"Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs, or seed, or as full grown? and, in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother's womb?"—P. 483.

The difficulty here glanced at is extreme, but it is one for the solution of which the transmutation theory gives no clue. 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 first 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, to escape the difficulty of supposing the first man at his creation to possess in that framework of his body "false marks of nourishment from his mother's womb," with Mr. Darwin you consider him to have been an improved ape, you only carry the difficulty up from the first man to the first ape; if, with Mr. Darwin, in violation of all observation, you break the barrier between the classes of vegetable and animal life, and suppose every animal to be But, secondly, as to many of these diffi- an "improved " vegetable, you do but carry culties, the alleged solving of which is one your difficulty with you into the vegetable great proof of the truth of Mr. Darwin's world; for, how could there be seeds if there theory, we are compelled to join issue with had been no plants to seed them? and if him on another ground, and deny that he you carry up your thoughts through the gives us any solution at all. Thus, for in-vista of the Darwinian eternity up to the stance, Mr. Darwin builds a most ingenious primæval fungus, still the primeval fungus argument on the tendency of the young of must have had humus, from which to draw the horse, ass, zebra, and quagga, to bear into its venerable vessels the nourishment on their shoulder and on their legs certain of its archetypal existence, and that humus barred stripes. Up these bars (bars sinis- must itself be a "false mark" of a pre-exter, as we think, as to any true descent of isting vegetation. existing animals from their fancied protoWe have dwelt a little upon this, because type) he mounts through his "thousands it is by such seeming solutions of difficulties and thousands of generations," to the exist- as that which this passage supplies that the ence of his "common parent, otherwise transmutationist endeavors to prop up his perhaps very differently constructed, but striped utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculalike a zebra." (P. 67.) "How inexplicable," tion. he exclaims, 66 on the theory of creation, is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulder and legs of several species of the horse genus and in their hybrids!" (P. 473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species was created with a tendency "like this, is to

There are no parts of Mr. Darwin's ingenious book in which he gives the reins more completely to his fancy than where he deals with the improvement of instinct by his principle of natural selection. We need but instance his assumption, without a fact

...

impossible" [we beg our readers to notice the cxmark in the younger Darwin]" that the first insects were the anthers or stigmas of flowers, act phrase on which we have had so often to rewhich had by some means loosed themselves from their parent-plant; and that many other insects have gradually, in long process of time" [again we beg special attention to the remarkable foreshadowing of the gradual long-time development of the younger Darwin], "been formed from these; some acquiring wings, others fins, and others claws " [like Mr. Darwin's bats, ceaseless efforts to procure their food, or to seand fly-catching bears, and crabs], “from their cure themselves from injury.

on which to build it, that the marvellous by the air; obtain the passion and power of reskill of the honey-bee in constructing its production; are sensible to heat, and cold, and cells is thus obtained, and the slave-making moisture; and become in reality insects fed with habits of the Formica Polyerges thus formed. honey. There seems to be no limit here to the ex-who, contemplating this subject, thinks it not I am acquainted with a philosopher, uberance of his fancy, and we cannot but think that we detect one of those hints by which Mr. Darwin indicates the application of his system from the lower animals to man himself, when he dwells so pointedly upon the fact that it is always the black ant which is enslaved by his other colored and more fortunate brethren. "The slaves are black!" We believe that, if we had Mr. Darwin in the witness-box, and could subject him to a moderate cross-examination, we should find that he believed that the tendency of the lighter colored races of mankind to prosecute the negro slave-trade was really a remains, in their more favored condition, of the “extraordinary and odious instinct” which had possessed them before they had been "improved by natural selection" from Formica Polyerges into Homo. This at least is much the way in which (p. 479) he slips in very quite incidentally the true identity of man with the horse, the bat, and the porpoise :

--

"The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of a porpoise, and leg of a horse, the same number of vertebræ forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant, and innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight successive modifications."-P. 479.

. . The anthers

and stigmas are therefore separate beings.”*

66

Many of our readers will remember the humor with which Frere and Canning, in the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin," exposed these philosophical arguments of the last generation. But their illustrations of the system apply so admirably to some of the speculations of our present volume, that we cannot forbear from quoting a few of them :—

this theory would not enable us to account for "Quere, whether a practical application of the genesis or original formation of space itself, in the same manner in which Dr. Darwin has traced the whole of organized creation to his six filaments? We may conceive the whole of our present universe to have been originally conSuch assumptions as these, we once more this primæval point, or punctum saliens of the centered in a single point; we may conceive repeat, are most dishonorable and injurious universe, evolving itself by its own energies, to to science; and though, out of respect to have moved forward in a right line, ad infinitum, Mr. Darwin's high character and to the tone which it had generated would begin to put itself of his work, we have felt it right to weigh in motion in a lateral direction, describing an till it grew tired; after which the right line the "argument" again set by him before us area of infinite extent. This area, as soon as it in the simple scales of logical examination, became conscious of its own existence, would yet we must remind him that the view is not begin to ascend or descend according as its spea new one, and that it has already been cific gravity would determine it, forming an im treated with admirable humor when pro- mense solid space filled with vacuum, and capapounded by another of his name and of his ble of containing the present universe. Space lineage. We do not think that, with all his being thus obtained, and presenting a suitable matchless ingenuity, Mr. Darwin has found nidus or receptacle for the accumulation of chaany instance which so well illustrates his own theory of the improved descendant un- of fire being produced in the chaotic mass by otic matter, an immense deposit of it would be gradually accumulated; after which the filament der the elevating influences of natural selec- an idiosyncracy or self-formed habit analogous tion exterminating the progenitor whose spe- to fermentation, explosion would take place, cialities he has exaggerated as he himself suns would be shot from the central chaos, affords us in this work. For if we go back two generations we find the ingenious grandsire of the author of the "Origin of Species" speculating on the same subject, and almost in the same manner with his more daring descendant. Speaking of the delicate organs of his favorite plants, Dr. Darwin tells

us:

planets from suns, and satellites from planets. In this state of things the filament of organization would begin to exert itself in those independent masses which in proportion to their heat. This filament, after an infinite series of bulk exposed the greatest surface to light and ages. [the Dawinian eternity], would begin to ramify, and its oviparous offspring would diver* Additional note xxxix. to Darwin's "Botanic

"They now acquire blood more oxygenated Garden.”