nutrition, producing increase of growth. Its ordinary operation is (1) to increase the organism to its full size; (2) to keep it up to that point; (3) but disturbances often occur by which nutrition is obstructed in one part, and from that cause is directed to another.

Every fruit-culturist knows that pruning out redundant growth in a tree increases the growth force in the remaining limbs. So too, freeing a grape vine from the suckers which start from its root prevents a diversion of the sap from the main body. But who ever heard or dreamed that this process, however long continued, would change the cherry into an apple, or the frost grape into an Isabella ?

Assuming for the nonce, the absence of an intelligent design in creation; that teleology is a myth; and that Darwin's theory, as explained and modified by his followers, is the orthodox theory of the production of species-there are nevertheless certain peculiarities for which, upon such assumption, it seems utterly impossible to account. How, for instance, is the poison faculty developed in some serpents, and why should it not be found in all as well? Why is the bite of some insects poisonous and of others not? Why is the organ of poison found in the tail in bees, wasps and scorpions, and in the head of spiders, bugs and centipedes ?

There are white, black, reddish and olive complexioned men. Which was the primitive color,

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was the original color, how did natural selection turn some black, some red and others olive?

These instances might be extended much farther, but I will only mention the case of the Ruminants. The peculiarities of this class is confined to certain mammals, and so far as researches now go, it appeared first in the Pliocene.

In brief, certain herbivorous mammals are provided with two stomachs-an anomalous one as a reservoir for the reception of the food in a crude state, and the other a true stomach to receive the food after it has been forced back to the mouth and fully masticated. How this peculiarity was produced, and why it is not found in the horse and others of the herbivora, is not explained by the theory in question.

In his "Descent of Man" Darwin, if he does not manifest a waning confidence in his own theory, has, to say the least, materially damaged it in the estimation of others, by the admission of serious mistakes; and the discovery of other and more important agents of change. On page 146 of vol. 1, he admits that after reading Nageli on plants, he had in the earlier editions of the Origin of Species "probably attributed too much to the action of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest." "I had," he says, "not formerly sufficiently considered the existence of many structures, which appear to be, as far as we can judge, neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected

Again on page 148: "An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must be left to the assumed uniform action of those unknown agencies, which occasionally induced strongly marked and abrupt deviations of structure in our domestic productions."

Here there are admissions of "strongly marked and abrupt deviations of structure"-and "structures which are neither beneficial or injurious," which according to his own statement in the Origin of Species absolutely breaks down his theory. Nor is this all; there is it seems "a large residuum of change" brought about by "unknown agencies," and the statement that "In the greater number of cases," referring to occasional modifications and monstrosities, "we can only say that the cause of each slight variation and of each monstrosity lies much more in the nature and condition of the organism than in the nature of the surrounding conditions."

Akin to these "unkown agencies, etc.," is the statement in a note to page 215 in regard to the sterility of hybrids in which he speaks of them as the incidental results of certain unknown differences in the constitution of the reproductive system of the species which are crossed."

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What may be the force and extent of these "unknown agencies," "constitution of the organism," and "unknown differences," he does not attempt to define. They stand as unknown quantities, which for aught that appears may be

ascribed to natural selection. They appear to perform the convenient office of a residuary clause in a will, which not unfrequently gathers in a much larger amount of the estate of the decedent, than is before enumerated in the form of bequests and legacies.

CHAPTER III.

THEORIES.

Sexual Selection. Esthetic Taste How Man Became Denuded of Hair.

Darwinian Theory (continued). in Animals.

In the original work of Darwin, "Natural Selection," is made the chief agent in producing a division into species. "Sexual Selection" is briefly referred to as a struggle between the males of polygamous animals for the possession of the females, whereby the progeny of the victors were increased, and that of the vanquished diminished; and in this way he undertakes to account for the developement of certain organs of offense, such as the horns of the stag, and the spurs of the cock. By parity of reasoning he also undertakes to account for the gay plumage of the males of certain species of birds, by supposing the females to have selected the best looking for their mates, leaving the unselected without offspring and the whole subject is disposed of in less than three pages. (2--83, etc).

In the "Descent of Man," however, the subject occupies directly or indirectly three-fourths of the whole work. "Sexual Selection (he says) depends on the advantages which certain indi