though prido may. The next suggests a closer association of our ancestors of the olden time with "our poor relations" of the quadrumanous family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately, however-even if we must account for him scientifically-man with his two feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Intermediate links between the Bimana and the Quadrumana are lacking altogether; so that, put the geno alogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, tho four-handed races will not serve for our forerunners -at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great-toes, instead of thumbs, upon his nether extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping tho chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many ages ago-before the British Channel existed, says Lyell' -and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their great-toes in the divergent and thumblike fashion. That would be evidence indeed: but, until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must needs believe in the separate and special creation of man, however it may have been with the lower animals and with plants.

No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis strongly suggest the evolution of

1 Vide "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancoment of Science,” 1859, and London Athenæum, pannim, . It appears to be conceded that these "celts" or stono knives aro artificial productions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rlilпосегов, etc.

the human no less than the lower animal races out of some simple primordial animal-that all are equally "lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." But, as the author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and accepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form or forins of being which included potentially all that have since existed and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems as great likelihood that one special origination should be followed by another upon fitting occasion (such as the introduction of man), as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ from each other only in some details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements he adds to the machine ho possesses; he adapts a new rig or a new rudder to an old boat this answers to Variation. "Like begets like," being the great rule in Nature, if boats could engender, the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon; and so the primordial boat bo developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft-the very diversification, as well as the successivo improvements, entailing the

disappearance of intermediate forms, loss adapted to any ono particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and become extinct species: this is Natu ral Selection. Now, let a great and important advance be made, like that of steam navigation: here, though the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and therefore the actual way is to mako a new vessel on a modified plan: this may answer to Specifio Creation. Anyhow, the one does not necessarily ex clude the other. Variation and natural selection may play their part, and so may specifle creation also. Why not?

This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theory of transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie in obscurity, beyond the bounds of proof, though within those of conjecture or of analogical inference. Why not hold fast to the customary view, that all species were directly, instead of indi rectly, created after their respectivė kinds, as we now behold them-and that in a manner which, passing our comprehension, wo intuitively refer to the supernatural? Why this continual striving after "the unattained and dim?" why these anxious endeavors, especially of late years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools and different tendencies, to pene trate what one of them calls "that mystery of mys teries," the origin of species?

To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the human intellect, "the delirious yet divino desire to know," stimulated as it has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and process es of inorganic Nature; in the fact that the principal

triumphs of our ago in physical science have consisted in tracing connections where none were known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a common cause or origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the reduction of supposed independently originated species to a common ultimate origin-thus, and in various other ways, largely and legitimately extending the domain of secondary causes. Surely the scientific mind of an ago which contemplates the solar system. As evolved from a common revolving fluid masswhich, through experimental research, has come to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical aflinity, and mechanical power as varieties or derivative and convertible forms of one force, instead of independent species-which has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, such as the metals, into kindred groups, and pertinently raised the question, whether the members of each group may not be mere varieties of one species-and which speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate unity of matter, of a sort of prototype or simple element which may be to the ordinary species of matter what the Protozoa or what the component cells of an organism are to the higher sorts of animals and plants-the mind of such an age cannot be expected to let the old belief about species pass unquestioned. It will raise the question, how the diverse sorts of plants and animals came to be as they are and where they are, and will allow that the whole inquiry transcends its powers only when all endeavors have failed. Granting the origin to be supernatural, or miraculous even, will not arrest the inquiry. All real origination, the philosophers will

say, is supernatural; their very question is, whether we have yet gone back to the origin, and can affirm that the present forms of plants and animals aro tho primordial, the miraculously created ones. And, ovon if they admit that, they will still inquiro into tho order of the phenomena, into the form of the miraclo. You might as well oxpect the child to grow up content with what it is told about the advent of its infant brother. Indeed, to learn that the now-comer is tho gift of God, far from lulling inquiry, only stimulates speculation as to how the precious gift was bestowed. That questioning child is father to the man-is phi losophier in short-clothes.

Since, then, questions about the origin of species will be raised, and have been raised-and sinco tho theorizings, however different in particulars, all proceed upon the notion that one species of plant or animal is somehow derived from another, that the dif ferent sorts which now flourish aro lineal (or unlineal) descendants of other and carlier sorts-it now con cerns us to ask, What are the grounds in Nature, tho admitted facts, which suggest hypotheses of derivation in some shape or other? Reasons there must be, and plausible ones, for the persistent recurrence of theories upon this genetic basis. A study of Darwin's book, and a general glance at the present stato of the natural sciences, enable us to gather the following as among the most suggestive and influential. We can only enumerate them here, without much indication of their particular bearing. There is

1. The general fact of variability, and the general tendency of the variety to propagato its liko-tho