preservation-had, for example, the palmation of the toes occurred in a bird living partly in the water, or the baldness in another to whom head-feathers were inconvenient (and the like phenomenon has been observed to be hereditary in doves); or, again, had similar changes taken place, only in an opposite direction-say the strengthening of the lungs instead of their weakening, or the addition of pigment to eyes formerly devoid of it, instead of its withdrawal from eyes formerly possessed of it; had, especially, owing to the favourable influence of such variations, and the consequent multiplication of their possession, some of the successive generations been born of parents both of whom varied in the same manner ;-had this been so, we cannot doubt but that races of living beings would have come into existence differing most markedly in structure from their progenitors, and forming species which the anti-Darwinian naturalist would ridicule the idea of ever having sprung from the source they did.

Of course, if Mr. Warington may be allowed to vary the facts of nature as he pleases, and also to select them, as well as to vary his arguments irrespective of his own premises and logic, there can be no doubt he may establish Darwinism or any other fanciful hypothesis.

But now I must pass rapidly on, and notice a few points only, to show that I have not overlooked them, though I cannot now possibly notice all. As to " As to "use and disuse," the Upland goose alone refutes Mr. Darwin and Lamarck. As to Mr. Warington's difficulty with respect to Pliny's evergreen plane-tree, it is explained, I think, in a word:-" The earth brings forth," as God commanded; and if the appropriate soil is wanting for what has been once produced, no doubt a species or variety of plant may die out or be greatly modified. This also, I think, affords the simple explanation why a heavier crop of hay is obtained from mixed seed than from seed of a single kind; and it teaches why the rotation of crops in farming is beneficial. It also refutes the endless prolificacy theory of individual forms. They would soon exhaust the soil that suits them, and then die.

As regards all Mr. Warington's instances of sailors' long sight and students' short sight, of right-hand use and longlegged runners, down even to the aldermanic development of the stomach, he surely knows that no long-sight or short-sight race has been thus produced; that throughout the world all races are generally right-handed; and I don't believe he can prove that all the swiftest runners have the longest legs; while it is notorious that all the feasts of the Corporation of London have not served to produce such a pot-bellied race as the miserable, half-starved Bushmen in South Africa!

I grant, freely, that there are variations of the kind Mr. Darwin appeals to. I deny that such variations are either in

the direction or to the extent he wishes us to believe, contrary to every instance he himself has adduced. His analogy of artificial selection by man in the breeding of pigeons, &c., is only another of his illogical efforts that even his own facts refute. For we know that all artificial breeds of pigeons or rabbits become very soon extinguished by reversion to their common type, when left to themselves and to nature.

Mr. Warington tries to obliterate the peculiarities we know as regards species, although in another place he admits specific differences at the present time to be constant and inherent. And as regards his belief in new species being developed progressively and upwards from lower to higher forms; because, perhaps, the lower forms, like those that now occupy the bottom of the ocean, are generally found embedded in strata below fishes that swim, and animals that live on the land;-I must quote from Professor Huxley's address to the Geological Society in 1862

Obviously [he says,] if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the nature and extent of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any group of animals or plants is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of progressive development, entirely comprised within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks.

This, of course, I use only as an argumentum ad hominem. I have already said that no dead remains of formerly existing gradations in the fauna or flora of the world could prove that they developed upwards and out of one another, though I admit variation within nature's known limits. Here, again, however, Darwinism requires us to reverse the facts of nature. The author of the Vestiges thought that no fish existed at the period of the lower Silurian deposits, but only crustacea and molluscs. But remains of fish have since been found even below that formation, and not merely of fish of a low kind, but in the highest state of organization.

If we think, with Hugh Miller, that "There was a time when the ichthyic form constituted the highest form of life," still the sea during that period did not swarm with fish of the degraded type. At the time also when (he concludes) all the carnivora and herbivorous quadrupeds were represented by reptiles; still there are no such magnificent reptiles now, as then reigned on the earth. If again (like Miller) we think there was a time when birds alone represented all the warmblooded animals of the globe; yet we find from the prints of

their feet left in sandstone, that the tallest man might have walked underneath their huge legs. So again, when we come to the higher strata in which quadrupedal mammals became imbedded by some convulsion of nature, what was their earliest character? We find the sagacious elephant, now extinct save in Africa and Asia,-and there restricted to two existing species,-we find it almost over all the old world, and a closely allied genus occupying its place in the new. "Most certainly all the geological facts (says Hugh Miller) are hostile to the Lamarckian conclusion," which Mr. Darwin has only rechaufféed and served up with some ingenious trimmings. "As if (continues the author of The Testimony of the Rocks) with the express intention of preventing so gross a mis-reading of the record, we find in at least two classes of animals— the fishes and reptiles-the higher races placed at the beginning." To quote, with some modifications, from another writer:-Thus it is too with birds and quadrupeds. Where deepest down in the earth's strata their remains appear, they show no evidence of just emerging from a lower order. They stand forth in full development, and usually of giant size, compared with such of the same orders as occupy a super-position. Indeed, the evidence of geology most naturally tends to the conclusion, that each of the successive races of creatures, found imbedded in the earth, was created in its highest state of perfection; and that the varieties of the same orders afterwards found, testify rather to a process of degradation than to a process of development towards a higher class.*

Finally as regards the phenomena of embryology, and the marked similarity in all organic development, and the existence of what are called "rudimentary organs," occasionally not developed,-they appear to me only to teach that all organic growth proceeds upon common vital principles and laws, which, the true theory of creation enables us to understand, must have been ordained by infinite Wisdom and with beneficent Design. To establish this, however, is not my present task; which has been only to endeavour to prove that Mr. Darwin's theory, as advocated by Mr. Warington, is utterly incredible.

Captain FISHBOURNE.-I rise to speak on this subject, in order to look at it from a common-sense point of view, and to express my protest against Darwinism. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Warington have founded many of their arguments upon the effects of man's interference with nature, as for instance in the case of domestic animals. The alterations, brought about by man's

* Vide Creation's Testimony to its God, 10th ed., p. 133.

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