While Geology discloses in each of these great divisions gradational forms adapted to their surroundings, it also discloses the co-existence of three of these distinct types, in the earliest periods of time, and consequently forbids the idea of their progressive transmutation from one to the other. It establishes the fact of separate and independent creations, each with its distinct gradational forms,—and thus concurs with Divine Revelation, as well as with scientific observation and human experience, in condemning the visionary speculations of Mr. Darwin.

In what way these distinct primordial forms first came into existence, science is absolutely incompetent to determine, for the line of inquiry is beyond her reach. If the great Author of nature has given us no revelation of His creative acts, which faith can receive, we must necessarily be content to remain in humble ignorance.

Mr. Darwin, however, is of an entirely different opinion. He thinks he can explain how physical laws and physical agents have brought into existence all the successive forms of organic life, from its first beginning, and how they have, with discriminating wisdom, adapted them to the progressive modifications of the earth's surface, determined their mutual relations, as parts of a whole system, and decreed the functions which each was to perform in the drama of life.

He is, indeed, forced to admit the necessity of some supernatural agency, (he does not say what it was,) in order to account for the vitality of at least "one primordial form into which life was first breathed." This being done, all necessity ceases for further intervention on the part of the implied Deity, and the whole plan of creation, as subsequently realized, so wise, so beautiful, so wondrously harmonious, is the result of the chance operations of physical agents, under the watchful and beneficent providence of Natural Selection!

In order to test the scientific and philosophic merit of this hypothesis, let us make a rigid application of it to the known facts of the Animal Kingdom.

As the fundamental idea of this hypothesis is the transmutation of animals from simpler to higher forms, by Nat

ural Selection, "accumulating slight successive favorable variations," it is evident that the primordial forms of Mr. Darwin must have belonged to the lowest great division of the Animal Kingdom, viz., to the Protozoans.

Thanks to the labors of Prof. Ehrenberg, of Berlin, and others, this sub-kingdom, hitherto little known, has been very thoroughly explored. In one class, (infusoria,) which Ehrenberg has named Polygastria, he has described twenty-two families, of which the Monadida is the first and simplest, each containing many species. This class "exists, in countless millions, in water, both salt and fresh ;"-" many of these living atoms crowd the water in which they are found to such an extent, that they are not separated from each other by a space greater than the size of their whole bodies; so that, by a very little calculation, it will be seen that one drop of such water contains more of these active existences than there are human beings on the surface of the globe." Their universal distribution, where water is to be met with fit for their reception, is another marvelous fact connected with these animals.

Mr. Darwin could not desire better conditions for the test of his hypothesis. Here we have all his so-called laws, in vigorous operation; "Growth, with Re-production ;" "Variability;" and especially his main law, "a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and, as a consequence, to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of character, and the Extinction of less improved forms." We are ready to admit, that in this state of things, at an early day, some one or more monads, pressed by hunger, may by chance have developed "a Variation;" possibly, some superiority in their prehensible proboscis, which is their only external organ, and serves for progression and nutrition. We agree that this would give them a very great advantage over their fellows, and that they would "have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected" to become better fed monads.

This variation of form, thus acquired, would doubtless be transmitted to their offspring, without the aid of our author's inevitable Natural Selection,-for these animals have no sexual preferences, but perpetuate themselves by self-division.

Nor is there here any chance for "Natural Selection (to act) by accumulating slight successive favorable variations;" for, granting at the start, the greatest possible variation which the simple structure of these animals will admit of, consisting of a stomach and proboscis, the only result that could follow would be, a race of better fed and better developed Monads. The utmost development of any variation in the form of these organs, would not transmute them into new and different organs; and we have demonstration that it has worked no "Divergence" in the essential characteristics, nor produced any "Extinction" of this simplest aboriginal family.

So also one or more of the voracious family of the Amœba, who are ever changing their shapes by the protrusion and retraction of the foot-like processes of their bodies, might, by some accidental variation or increase of this faculty, have been able to feed more abundantly on other animalculæ. Such variations, transmitted to their descendants, may have produced that diversity in size and shape which we now observe; nevertheless, the characteristics of the family remain unaltered.

These are instances of the lowest forms of animal life,—mere animated globules, or living ventricular sacs, corresponding to the cellular amphigams of the Vegetable Kingdom. According to the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin, they, or their vegetable analogues, must have furnished the "one primordial form," from which, he thinks, "all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended,"-for, there are none lower, to be developed into higher forms of life, by Natural Selection. What "Divergence of character and extinction of less favored forms" has Natural Selection accomplished, during the millions of ages which are claimed for organic life? These first progenitors of animated nature, according to a strictly consistent interpretation of this hypothesis, ought to have gone to their graves long ago, having been pushed out of existence in the struggle of life, by far higher and more favored forms, for it is upon this principle that Mr. Darwin accounts for the extinction of those ancient races which Geology reveals. But the fact is, these forefathers still live and flourish; they have undergone no extinction or divergence of

character, for they remain, still, the lowest and simplest possible form of organization, and their prodigious numbers are still as great as they possibly could have been, when a primal sea deposited in the Cambrian strata the first token of organic life.

Such is the starting point to which Mr. Darwin has confined himself, by his own terms; and according to his direct statements, this is the beginning and end of the Divine agency in the work of creation. He tells us, plainly, that every other animal has been manufactured, by Natural Selection, out of the inherited chance variations of probably one primordial form,— the bad ones being rejected, and the good ones accumulated and "worked up" into different types of organization, by this evervigilant power. According to him, God created only a monad, but Natural Selection has transmuted it into a reasoning man, and has breathed into him a conscious immortal soul !

Such is the monstrous and absurd conclusion in which his hypothesis ends. In support of it, he appeals in vain tỏ Geology, to prove that the extinct forms of ancient life, were the gradual developments of one parent stock. Geology refuses to reveal that infinite succession of slightly differing gradational forms which his hypothesis demands, but, on the contrary, denies the assumption, by disclosing Protozoans, Radiates, Molluscs, and Articulates,—all co-existent from the earliest time. Mr. Darwin is conscious of this, and, accordingly, laments the imperfection of the geological record, but hopes that the time will come when it will be more in accordance with his hypothesis. He would have had less cause for grief, if he had framed his hypothesis in accordance with facts, instead of seeking, by gratuitous assumptions, to explain facts, to which he afterwards appeals in vain to prove his hypothesis.

He invokes the aid of time to prove, that these assumed transmutations of structural type, of which no trace can be found in the lowest of the zoic rocks in which fossils occur, were produced imperceptibly, by infinitely small degrees, during the illimitable periods of geological eras, which he claims for the azoic rocks, in which no trace of life has ever been discovered. But time, without specific force, (which he has failed

to demonstrate,) is powerless to effect change. An eternity of time could never quicken into motion the vis inertiæ of unorganized matter, so as to create new organizations,-nor could it change, in the slightest degree, the laws imposed on organized beings, from their first origin.

In framing his fanciful scheme, had he taken for his starting point, the original creation of one or more primordial forms in each of the great and distinct divisions of the Animal Kingdom, from which to develop his variations, he would have met with far less opposition from the geological record.

He might then have argued with far more plausibility from the development of variations, and from the modification of external causes, that the ancient extinct forms of each division had been gradually supplanted by kindred representatives now living. Passing over, in silence, the four lower sub-kingdoms, and confining himself solely to the highest, or Vertebrate, he would have found full necessity for the most extensive periods of time, and full scope for the most unbridled imagination, in applying these causes, simply, to the gradual development of homologous parts, so as to account, by the accumulation of slight beneficial changes, for the transmutation of the gills, scales and fins of a fish, into the lungs, feathers and wings of a bird, equipped with beak and claws.

We say that such a supposition would have been more plausible, though it would still be irreconcilable with geological facts and sound philosophy. But the admission that several or all the great types of organization were distinct creations, would entirely defeat the scope and aim of our author's hypothesis, which is, manifestly, framed so as to make the nearest approach to spontaneous generation, and to exclude a Divine Creator, as far as it is possible, from the works of creation.

Having breathed life into a globular monad, there is no farther need for His creative agency, or orderly arrangement. Mr. Darwin's imagination can "dream the rest ;" thenceforth Natural Selection takes the place of Divine intelligence.

We think it is evident, that Mr. Darwin has sought, from the very start, to invent an hypothesis which should be in direct opposition to what he calls "the common theory of sep