Mr. Darwin's medical studies are cheerfully to be borne in mind.

On the whole, we have to recollect this, that there is but one purpose in the book. If you scratch the apparent Frenchman that the modern Russian is, it is said, you lay bare at once the Tartar; so Mr. Darwin, by a scratch, would discover the monkey in the man. One can scarcely say that he has succeeded in this. But, by the same rule, I wonder if any scratching would bring to sight the bushy bruin that must be hidden in the hairless whale. It ought to, if we are to listen to Hearne the Hunter story-especially since Mr. Darwin himself assures us, in the case of another such conversion, that "inheritance would retain almost for eternity some of the original structure" (ii. 335).

And with this we must conclude in regard to the book on Expression. There may be those to whom all these pictures, with text, about expression proved something new, instructive, and entertaining; but can it be pretended that the information provided was really worth the purchase of 5267 copies in a single day, the first of the sale?

We have spoken of the latter half of the nineteenth century as likely to prove the most remarkable period in all English history for the feebleness of its thought; and surely if we reflect deeply, there can appear no want at least of a considerable number of relative proofs, so far as writing is concerned, philosophically, politically, even poetically. Tennyson sold well by merit, as Browning did not; but what of the sale of Tupper by favour?

And, after all, perhaps we are not much worse off than our forebears-perhaps it was always so. At all events, we have always open to us this consolation: That, even at the best of times, we are "mostly fools'

(Bias, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Cicero, Kant, Carlyle, Oxenstiern)!

Rabelais: "En toutes compagnies il y a plus de fols que de sages."

Frédéric le Grand: "Ah mon cher Sulzer, vous ne connaissez pas assez cette maudite race à la quelle nous appartenons!

CHAPTER XV.

CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS.

WHEN theory is brought face to face with fact, the one may at times only throw a doubt on the other: we ask, Could ordinary variations, as from day to day we see them, followed, too, by whatever supplemental application or selection it is possible to invent, ever even conceivably produce (in some certain case) that so extraordinary structure? We cannot always reanimate conviction, in the manner of Mr. Darwin, by the simple expedient of an imagination that is in an endless gradation throughout an endless past. No doubt you may produce anything you like in that way. With gradation enough, and imagination enough, and time enough, I know nothing to hinder the poker from passing into the tongs, or into the shovel either-so far as speech goes. It was on these terms, as we saw, that Mr. Darwin contrived to reassure himself in regard to the porcupine: We can, I think, understand," he seemed easily to say, 'why porcupines have been specially so provided; whereas we, for our part, precisely failed in this. For us, on the contrary, why these creatures should hoist a signal to the enemy, develop a provision in themselves that in the first instance was not for themselves but only altruistically for another, remained an enigma. And when theory is contrasted with fact, there are

innumerable enigmata such of which we can only adduce some.

In a paragraph headed "A Rare Blooming Flower," the Scotsman of 27th August 1889 begins thus: "There is now in full flower in the hothouses at Hamilton Palace gardens a fine specimen of the Eyuca Gloriosa Variegata, said to blossom only once in a hundred years." Here, I fear, there is something quite hopeless, whether for Plato or Aristotle, for Kant or Hegel, for Newton or Laplace, for Linnæus or Cuvier, or even-for Darwin!

On the 8th of the succeeding October there appeared in the same newspaper a paragraph from which I extract as follows:

"A French paper, Les Mondes, gives a fascinating account of a newly-discovered flower, of which rumours have from time to time reached the ears of floriculturists. It is called the snowflower, and is said to have been discovered by Count Anthoskoff in the most northern portion of Siberia, where the ground is continually covered with frost. This wonderful object shoots forth from the frozen soil only on the first day of each succeeding year. It shines for but a single day, and then resolves to its original elements. . . . Anthoskoff collected some of these seeds and carried them with him to St. Petersburg. They were placed in a pot of snow, where they remained for some time. On the 1st of the following January the miraculous snowflower burst through its icy covering, and displayed its beauties to the wondering Russian Royalty."

We repeat this only because of the authority that gives it. If true, then here is a New Year's Day gift, the interpreter of which may well be admired by any one of the above-named nine.

Mr. Darwin himself, in his Journal, furnishes us with some striking examples of what might have shaken his own creed when he came to it. He had the good fortune, he says, "to see several of the famous Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.” It is not probable that any man will make plain to us how, in the quite natural

development of a quite natural advantage, such an extraordinary creature came by and by to be built up. But is not the Benchuca," the great black bug of the Pampas," still more extraordinary? Mr. Darwin speaks

of it thus

"It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, an inch long, crawling over one's body. Before sucking they are quite thin, but afterwards become round and bloated with blood, and in this state are easily crushed. One which I caught at Iquique was very empty. When placed on a table, and though surrounded by people, if a finger was presented, the bold insect would immediately protrude its sucker, make a charge, and, if allowed, draw blood. It was curious to watch its body during the act of sucking, as in less than ten minutes it changed from being as flat as a wafer to a globular form. This one feast, for which the benchuca was indebted to one of the officers, kept it fat during four whole months; but, after the first fortnight, it was quite ready to have another suck.”

One meal could keep this insect fat during four whole months, how account by variation and application of accident for such an extraordinary advantage?

The Pteroptochos albicollis is particularly amusing. "It is called Tapacolo, or cover your posteriors,'" says Mr. Darwin; "and well does the shameless little bird deserve its name, for it carries its tail more than erect, that is, inclined backwards towards its head." On first seeing the Turco, another bird of the same genus," one is tempted to exclaim, 'A vilely stuffed specimen has escaped from some museum, and has come to life again!' It really requires little imagination to believe that it is ashamed of itself, and is aware of its most ridiculous figure." How certain marine animals come to save themselves from detection, some by emitting "a very fine purplish-red fluid which stains the water for the space of a foot around," and others by similarly “discolouring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink," will give some trouble to the explanation by gradual