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axis. The transitions continue, and it is only because the life of man does not span a thousand years that we cannot follow or perceive the changes of climate in time. The evidence of the rocks shows us clearly that, according to climatic variation, so the animal and vegetable adapted themselves to the changing environment, advancing or retrograding as the case might be. Either the successive creations were ruthlessly destroyed, to be replaced by a brand-new series, or the comprehensive law of evolution has been in operation since the germs of animation appeared on our planet. All the discoveries of biology teach us that the most complex organism is built up from the simple cell, and the study of embryology clearly reveals that during the transitional development of the ovum the embryo passes through successive lower animal grades before attaining to the higher type. Thus the embryonic chicken is at one period like a young dog-fish, and the human foetus has the evidences of a caudal appendage, and closely resembles the immature structure of the quadrumana before it is fashioned into Homo sapiens.' A young newt and a young salmon are absolutely alike at certain stages in development; then the reptilian characters appear, and finally the water-breathing gills are displaced by the air-breathing organs of the higher class. Metamorphism is visible throughout the whole range of the geological kingdom; organic structure is in a constant condition of change. The pangenesis doctrine of Darwin, or the modified heredity theory of Professor Weissmann, may not satisfactorily explain the potential

1 The article in the Nineteenth Century, November 1891-“Darwinism in the Nursery "bears forcibly on this point.

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TESCENT OF THE HORSE AND OTHER QUADRUPEDS ON DIFFERENT PLANES FROM A COMMON ANCESTRY-THE PALEOTHERIDA.

capabilities of the germ plasm; we do not yet know why that same protoplasm, identical apparently in composition during the incipient stages, should develop along different planes into plant or animal respectively. The broad fact, however, remains, that the highest organisms are thus built up from single cells, and that the embryonic stages reflect, as it were, the previous orders in the zoological kingdom, through which the higher grades of animal life have passed before attaining to the present development. To concede these points as we are driven to do by the researches of biological investigation is going a long way towards the recognition of the grand scheme of organic evolution; for there is nothing more difficult to accept in the doctrines of the survival of the fittest and natural selection than there is in the conception of complex man being built up from the lowly cell. If we credit the one axiom of biology, the others follow as almost inevitable corollaries.

The study of the stones teaches that, although organic types appear to have been constant through entire geological epochs, the inherent tendency to change has been reasserted in ratio to the prevalence of climatic variation. That which cannot conform must surely die. The blubber-eating Esquimaux races would infallibly disappear if the sub-arctic zone gave place to tropical conditions, as the negro races would die out in a colder clime to give place to more suitable races.

The time has gone by when the aspect of Christianity towards organic evolution can be hostile in character,' perhaps one of the most remarkable phases in contemporary thought being the countenance given by eminent theologians to the more advanced teachings of biology. Those who profess the doctrines of organic evolution are no longer adjudged without the pale of orthodox Christianity.

In the alluvial valleys of the Severn and tributary Avon are found embedded the remains of reindeer, bears, beavers, and primitive oxen, together with parts of the gigantic mammoth and other extinct animals. These bones tell of a land connection between Great Britain and Scandinavia many thousands of years ago, when subarctic conditions, glaciers, and ice-fields reigned supreme in our land. Stone implements and corn-grinding utensils from the same deposits tell of a contemporary race of mankind existing in a nomadic state. This race of men lived thousands of years before the time of Adam, according to the Biblical chronology; the necessary changes in climate and the distribution of land and sea could not have occurred in a brief six thousand years. Passages in the early portions

1 Vide Lux Mundi, section by the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, p. 181, ed. x.

of the Book of Genesis, it may be, point obscurely to pre-Adamite races of man ; and the variation in type from the highly-civilised man to the arboreal and cave-dwellers, the cannibal tribes, and lowly inhabitants of the Andaman Islands show us that man has been modified by infinitely small degrees through the Palæolithic and Neolithic ages. The study of the cathedral stones dimly reveals these things to my mind, and leads me to the conclusion that the spirit of life in every degree, from the very lowest, is, in a measure, indestructible, and cannot suffer extinction, any more than matter can be destroyed.

C. PARKINSON.

303

IN

SPORT AND LITERATURE.

N this paper it is to be understood that English literature alone is dealt with; for not only is the British field quite wide enough for one harvest, but it is the most prolific in the world as regards the combined crop suggested by the heading.

It cannot but be evident to the least sport-loving reader how closely associated are all forms of sports and pastimes with British life and thought; nor is it possible to disregard the effects of such association upon the manners, and customs, and writings of the nation in question. Suffice it to say, that some of the greatest of our poets and prose writers constantly allude to the subject. Such references are found in likely and unlikely places: in the staid Quarterly and decorous Spectator; in the frivolous, so-called "society" papers; and in publications nominally devoted to the discussions of science, the recording of law doings, or the illustrating of modes and robes.

With the exception of a few specialistic journals-as religious or trade magazines and newspapers-all English publications constantly contain reference, more or less direct, to sport. There are published in the British Isles some hundred magazines and newspapers which proclaim themselves sporting journals pure and simple, whilst of those four thousand others which professedly deal with all things on earth and elsewhere, there are but few indeed which never touch upon the topic in question. Even the legal journals, and those devoting a large portion of their space to recording the doings in the Courts, necessarily occasionally refer at length to this subject, as witness many recent sensational racing and other gambling cases tried by English judges and magistrates.

It is evident how strong a hold sport has established upon the language; how its phraseology and similes have been engrafted thereupon to its enriching?

In olden times a gentleman's education was held incomplete if he were not a master of all the mysteries and parlance pertaining to sports of the field; all the complicated argot of hawking and hunting:

these things were essential, even though he could neither read nor write. Such paltry matters of erudition as the latter were left to those in holy orders and other mere clerks.

In later days, when fox-hunting took the place of the more ceremonious forms of the science of venerie, which went out of vogue with the extermination of larger and more ferocious beasts of chase than the little red rover, a complicated phraseology still survived. But towards the middle of the present century the pedantry of sporting diction was voted "bad form ;" though enough of it still survives to render the man ridiculous who affects to be a sportsman, and, like Mrs. Malaprop, "deranges his epitaphs."

The learned Albert Barrère, in his "Argot and Slang,” observes that the study of the slang jargon of a nation—a language which is not the expression of conventional ideas, but the unvarnished rude expression of life in its true aspects-may give us an insight into the foibles and predominant vices (as also virtues) of those who use it.

As indicative of the way in which terms of the chase, of field sports, of games, and of the machines, implements, and accessories thereto, enter into the language of the street, the senate, the platform, and the newspaper, I append a few phrases that daily run trippingly off the British tongue. Thus we speak of a man being at bay when he is "driven into a corner," the term being a strictly technical one. In modern stag-hunting the quarry is said to be "set up at bay " when, overrun and exhausted, he gets his back against a rock, and haunch-deep in water, with head and antlers carried warily, defies the baying pack. In the latter case, "bay," of course, has another significance, meaning bark. Herein lies one of the baffling beauties of the English language. In the "Taming of the Shrew "one reads, "Your deer doth hold you at a bay;" the simile is just, though by a humorous method of illustration the ordinary positions are inverted. Speaking of the dead Cæsar, Antony says, " Here was't thou bayed, brave hart;" thus most appropriately borrowing a figure from the language of the chase. Again, in Scott's "Lady of the Lake" (Canto I., The Chase), we find the following spirited lines, showing how "The Knight of Snowdoun, James FitzJames," ran a gallant stag to bay:

The hunter marked that mountain high,

The lone lake's western boundary,
And deemed the stag must turn to bay,

Where that huge rampart barred the way.

Take also the verb "to babble" and the substantive "babbler.'

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