no better, save that civilization and industrious education have made them appear in a more refined shape, and longinculcated precepts have been mistaken for cognate principles of honesty and natural knowledge."

The theory of your ape descent was more confidently set forth in the following century by the celebrated Scotch judge, James Burnett, more familiarly known by his title of LORD MONBODDO, who boldly traced your pedigree from monkeys, and affirmed that in some countries men had tails like other beasts. Your great lexicographer, Dr. JOHNSON, was thought-vainly, as time has proved-to have put down his foot on the theory by observing, "Of a standing fact, sir, there ought to be no controversy; if there are men with tails, they hide them, but Monboddo is as jealous of his tail as a squirrel."* One of your most distinguished professors of the 19th century, a really learned man apart from his being called a

* Boswell's Life of Johnson, iv. 73.

professor, the celebrated MAX MULLER, somewhat sarcastically observes on the same subject-"Lord Monboddo had just finished his great work in which he derives all mankind from a couple of asses, and the dialects of the world from a language originally framed by some Egyptian gods."

Shortly after Lord Monboddo had propounded his theory of man's descent from a monkey, the philosophic LAMARCK endeavoured to put the whole subject of Development or Evolution into scientific ship-shape by reasoning thus-"You see in Nature," he said, "a gradation of organized beings, therefore we must admit a series of successive changes by which animals of one class can raise themselves to another. For example, a bird compelled by necessity to seek for water, either swims or passes through places of little depth, and its descendants do the same. During the course of many generations, the efforts which it made to extend its claws, would See Appendix B.

cause the formation of a membrane, and it would thus become to all intents a water bird; or it might extend its feet still more by passing through still deeper waters, and gradually its legs would become as long as those of a crane or flamingo. These two actions, combined with fresh desires aud a natural tendency to satisfy them, have united to form man from a monkey. A species of these animals, probably that of the orang-outang, though of this all remembrance has been lost (no specimen of the missing link having yet been found), began to climb trees, and to seize them with its hinder hands as well as with those before. After having thus walked on the ground for many generations, the hinder limbs became formed in a manner suitable to their habits, and feet appeared, by which means these animals were enabled to walk upright. They had no need of their paws for the purpose of gathering fruit or fighting; they were able to employ their fore-feet which were turned into hands, and hence by degrees

the snout became shortened, and therefore more vertical...... When the orang-outang is compelled to take to flight from very pressing danger, he immediately falls down on all fours, proving that such must have been the primitive condition of the animal; and thus children, who have large heads and prominent stomachs, can hardly walk at two years old, and their frequent tumbles indicate the natural tendency to resume the quadrupal state." *

In one of the ballads of the 19th century, which is supposed to point directly to the Evolution doctrine of Mr. Darwin, but which in reality belongs to Lamarck, as the original propounder of the view so charmingly advocated by his disciple, who has by his talent made the theory popular, Lamarck's idea of the short-legged shore bird gradually developing itself into the long-legged stork; or the short-necked deer, by continually stretching in order to graze on the topmost branches, in time evolved itself into

*See Appendix C.

a giraffe is thus faithfully expressed in the following lines:

"Have you heard this strange theory the doctors among,

That all living things from a monad have sprung?
This thing has been said, and now shall be sung.
A very tall pig with a very long nose,
Sent down a proboscis quite close to his toes,
And then by the name of an elephant goes.
A deer with a neck which was longer by half
Than most of his family-please not to laugh-
By stretching and stretching becomes a giraffe.
An ape with a pliable thumb and big brain,
When the gift of the gab he had managed to gain,
As a lord of creation established his reign," &c.

Lamarck's theory may remind you of an anecdote respecting a British officer in India, who when trying to convince a native of the value of converting iron into steel, received this sage reply-" What! would have me then believe that if I put an ass into a furnace it will come forth a horse?" Such a sensible reply is only to be paralleled by the overflowing wit of the Irish lad, when he exclaimed in reply to his English master, who had been tormenting him with some stupid questions,