structure of his flapper to the wings of a bat. No special use! then we must judge that a wiser structure might have been invented, by a more sagacious artist, for the benefit of those animals,' and that the works of Nature might be greatly improved.

This, however, must touch us very nearly, for as we are, according to the Theory, the nearest relations to the apes and monkeys, it cannot be but that the bones in our arm are of no special use to us; we have got them by inheritance, and if they were not advantageous to our ancestors the apes, they cannot be to us. This one would think is clear logic, but Mr Darwin states it differently, and affirms that they were of more use to our progenitors than they are to us.

We may believe,' says he, 'that the progenitor of the scal had not a flipper, but a foot with five toes fitted for walking or grasping, and we may further venture to believe that the several bones in the limbs of the monkey, horse, or bat, which have been inherited from a common progenitor, were formerly of more special use to that progenitor, or its progenitors, than they now are to those animals having such widely diversified habits; every detail of structure in every living creature may be viewed, either as having been of some special use to some ancestral form, or as being now of special use to the descendants of this form, either directly or indirectly, through the complex laws of growth' (220).

If the progenitor of the seal had a foot with five toes, fitted for walking or grasping, it must have been, according to any inference which Natural History would authenticate, either a man or an ape, unless indeed it were the plantigrade bear, which has a tendency in the Theory to get into the ocean in a new form. But who can hold the eel of

this science by the tail? for it can slip off into the preSilurian world, where there were 'swarms' of creatures 'totally unlike any existing animal,' and amongst some of those inexpressible vertebrated forms, the walking five-toed progenitor of the scal may have had his auspicious exist

ence.

But at any rate if the bones of a monkey were formerly of more special service to its progenitor than to the monkey itself, the same must be predicated of us, the near relations of that tribe, and who have the homologue of our limbs in other animals of such widely diversified habits;' for the rule that is good for one genus is good for another, if indeed we be separated from the Simian race by so great a division as a genus.

We have then had a progenitor whose legs and arms were of more special use to him than to us his descendants, nay, every detail of our structure' had some special use in our ancestor in a higher degree than it has in us. Our limbs are but an expedient, a tinkering and cobbling of appendages, obsolete in our species, but of which Natural Selection has made the best she could, finding them on her hands for work, and constrained as she was to turn to some account these inheritances from a better formed and better limbed progenitor.

The machinery of our bodies therefore has not been improving in the lapse of geological time, but deteriorating; and we are greatly mistaken if we suppose that the human limbs, their proportions and their uses, are the most advanced results of anatomical construction-if special use of limbs can be considered a proof of superior organization, then, by this doctrine, it is indisputable that a retrograde course of development is discernible in the formation of the

human body—and that if we be indeed improved apes, we have nevertheless deteriorated from our unknown ancestors, whose history is lost in the night of geological antiquity.

But this also demands observation, that with all this before us it is clear that the Theory must have been suspended in the instance of this ancient Incognito, for if his limbs were of more special use to him than they have been to his descendants, he ought to have been triumphant in the struggle for existence, as it is always the specially formed animal, possessing the greater advantages, that triumphs in the scuffle, and exterminates all other competitors. So, however, it happens that his specially serviceable limbs were of no avail in his case; the Theory was turned against him, the favoured animal was exterminated, and the inferior were perpetuated; and thus, instead of our non-pareil ancestor with his perfect limbs, we have had bats, seals, donkeys, apes, and men!

At the same time it is not to be forgotten that Mr Darwin has given another account of the progenitor of vertebrate animals, and therefore of our genus, as well as of the animals just named: An indefinite repetition of the same part or organ is the common characteristic of all low or little-modified forms, therefore we may readily believe that the unknown progenitor of the vertebrata possessed many vertebræ' (469).

If this be the common progenitor of the horse, monkey, bat, seal, &c., then to our surprise we now hear of him as 'a low and little-modified' form, whilst in the passage which we have just been examining his limbs are described as having been of more use to him than to his descendants. Here is a contradiction; but perhaps Mr Darwin may in

tercalate millions of ages between the progenitor of the horse, &c., and the progenitor of the vertebrata, we know not; only on this subject we must repeat what we have already said, that this imaginary progenitor of the vertebrata ruins the whole system, for his appearance on the scene with many vertebræ, ready made, contradicts all that the learned author has inculcated with such careful repetition in his volume-that nature does nothing by leaps, and that every peculiar part of every animal is the result of Natural Selection's labours in an immense allowance of time.

And from this there is no escape, for if the animal in question was THE PROGENITOR of the vertebrata, he could have been preceded by no other vertebrated animal, he must have been the first; and yet he had a great many vertebræ all at once! In other words, he was so created, for Natural Selection could not produce such a phenomenon, and there is no other alternative possible for his first appearance, excepting spontaneous generation, which Mr Darwin rejects as inadmissible in science. So then, after all, the first vertebrated was really created! Here, then, we have the happiness to agree with Mr Darwin; and the only difference between us is that we beg leave to extend the rule to a vast many other cases. We have no doubt that the progenitor of a bird had many feathers, of a fish many scales, of an insect many facets in its compound eye, and so on throughout the animated world.

We need not tarry to inquire more particularly about this alleged progenitor of the vertebrata, but by this imperfect allusion to his form, it is most probable that he was a serpent, and a very long one too; for as he must have

been parent of all serpents, we cannot doubt that he had more vertebræ than his descendants, in this case of descent, as well as in all the others.

The general plan of structure that seems to have been determined in the organization of animals, admits both of additions and omissions when the case requires; and by this fact teaches us that there must have been something Lore than inheritance at work, for inheritance can neither add nor leave out a part of the body.

The

Let us take a true insect, a bee for instance. thorax is interposed between the head and the abdomen, and so far is analogous to that part in human anatomy, though it is but an analogy. To the thorax are attached the three pairs of legs; the first pair may be compared with the pectoral extremities of the vertebrate animals, and the last to the pelvic members or hind legs, but to the middle pair of the insect's legs there is no analogue in the vertebrate series.* These therefore are out of the rule and type of other animals.

So when we speak of the insect's eye, we say it is formed on the general principle, or rather, scientific theory of all other eyes, the optic nerve, the vitreous humour, the lens, and the retina; but the plan on which the principle is applied is greatly altered, and that which in the vertebrated animals is a single instrument is in insects a compound one, so as to contain some thousand facets, or corneæ, each a distinct instrument of vision in that compound hemispherical organ, which is popularly called the eye; each of these facets is of hexagonal form, and each has its peculiar

Mr Darwin has observed that 'the anterior and posterior limbs in each member of the vertebrate and articulate classes are plainly homologous' (468), but he has made no remark on the middle legs of the articulate class.