Selection (or the sequence of Natural events) can perform these operations, and execute these transformations which seem so easy to Mr Darwin, that it can shorten or widen limbs to any extent, and cover them with membranes so as to turn them into a fin; that a webbed foot can be metamorphosed into a wing, and that animals can be changed by this agency from fishes to quadrupeds, from quadrupeds to birds, &c. &c., ad libitum.

Let all this be granted, and the explanation is manifest ;' but till it be proved, what is this but corroborating one assertion by another? And it is obvious that by taking for granted the thing to be proved any other hypothetical term might be substituted for Natural Selection, and might serve just as well for the argument. For instance, let the influence of the soil (the hypothesis of M. Trémaux) or the agency of the solar heat and light take the place of Natural Selection in the above passage, and it is obvious that either would do quite as well for Mr Darwin's explanation of morphology. Let us, argumenti gratiá, say, That the solar influence has the power of changing the forms of organized beings, then on this Theory, in changes of this nature, there will be no tendency to change the original pattern,' for the agent must act on what it finds ready at hand.

But Mr Darwin tells us that it is hopeless to explain the homologues of morphology by the doctrine of utility and final causes; we therefore naturally suppose that he himself is able to explain these changes which, he affirms, are effected by Natural Selection. Will he then undertake to describe to us in accurate scientific language, the process by which the wing of a bat, the eye of an eagle, the proboscis of an elephant, the galvanic battery of an electrical fish, or the heart of a mammifer, were constructed; and

that not in general vague terms of development, plastic tendencies, slight modifications, generative variability,' &c., but in such clear anatomical, chemical, optical, or dynamic terms, as the case may require, so as to enable us to comprehend without any doubt how these marvellous structures were fabricated, and to know the whole process as satisfactorily as we know the structure of a watch or a steamengine?

Now, unfortunately, Mr Darwin has in another part of his book said, 'it is most difficult to conjecture by what transitions organs could have arrived at their present state' (213).

If even conjecture is at fault here, an instrument which in Mr Darwin's hands has done such ample service, it must be utterly hopeless to ask for certainty; and if even imagination can do nothing, how can we look for a scientific exegesis? In short, it is manifest not only by this confession, but by the very nature of the question itself, that the learned author of the Theory has here come to a dead-lock; and therefore we beg leave to turn his own language upon himself, and to say nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class by Natural Selection and the Struggle for Life.'

But it seems that in our view of the case we can only say it pleased the Creator to construct each animal or plant.' In other words, we do not scruple to confess 'we do not know; we suppose we have reached the limits of knowledge when we come to a certain point, and there we stop; and we judge confessed ignorance to be far safer than pretended knowledge.

And what can be the ultimate advantage of attempting

to force an entrance into the unapproachable? Are there not some things, nay, very many, beyond the sphere of our intellect, even if it be taken for granted that there is no supreme Intelligent Mind, which has produced all the forms of life in this our planet, and in all the planets of all the systems in the Universe. If the Transmutationists complain that we check the spirit of discovery by taking refuge in a Deity, we reply that they too have their Deity, beyond whom they cannot advance. They have a power incessantly watching to improve any modification for the benefit of the organic world.' This unquestionably is a Deity, and, moreover, it is one whose actions the great Master of the School declares it is impossible to explain even by conjecture. This, in other words, is the old language, his ways are past finding out.' ways are past finding out.' We then claim our Deity, and that not an Allegory, a Metaphor, an illusion of words, but a Supreme Intelligent Power which always has watched to develope all possibilities of existence, and whose ways are past finding out.' We only ask that our Deity may know as much, and be able to do as much, as Natural Selection-be as wise, as prescient, and as beneficent-and we are quite sure that all the mysteries of the organic world will then be explained up to a certain point. And what, we would ask, is the real difference if on the one hand it be said, that it pleased the Creator to make a plant or animal so and so, and leave it unexplained; or, on the other hand, to affirm that Natural Selection made a plant or animal so and so, and yet not be able even to conjecture by what means it was effected?

After all, then, it is a question between two Deities. Let the world judge whether it is wiser and better to be

lieve in these new gods newly come up,' or in Him who from everlasting to everlasting is the Almighty?

These sentiments it may be pleasing to see confirmed by the testimony of a distinguished physiologist.

The unity of plan, which is visible through the whole animal kingdom, is nowhere more remarkable than in the function (of the heart) of which an outline has now been given. We have seen that, however apparently different, the essential character of the reproductive process is the same in the highest animal as in the lowest. It has been shown that the development of the highly-organized body of man commences from the same starting-point with that of the meanest creature living; for even man, in all the pride of his philosophy, and all the splendour of his luxury, was once but a single cell, undistinguishable, by all human means of observation, from that which constitutes the entire fabric of one of the simplest plants. And when the physiologist is inclined to dwell unduly upon his capacity for penetrating the secrets of Nature, it may be salutary for him to reflect that, even when he has attained the farthest limit of science, by advancing to those general principles which tend to place it on the elevation which others have already reached, he yet knows nothing of those wondrous operations, which are the essential parts of every one of those complicated functions, by which the life of the body is sustained. Why one cell should absorb; why another, that seems exactly to resemble it, should assimilate; why a third should secrete; why a fourth should prepare the reproductive germs; and why of two germs that seem exactly similar, one should be developed into the meanest Zoophyte, and another into the complex fabric of man,-are questions that physiology is not likely ever to answer.

'All our science is but the investigation of the mode or plan on which the Creator acts; the power which operates is infinite, and therefore inscrutable to our limited comprehension. But when man shall have passed through this embryo state, and shall have undergone that metamorphosis, by which everything whose purpose was temporary shall be thrown aside, and his permanent or immortal essence shall alone remain, then, we are encouraged to believe, his finite mind shall be raised more nearly to the character of the infinite; all his highest aspirations shall be gratified, and never-ending sources of delightful contemplation shall be continually opening to his view.

"The philosopher who has attained the highest summit of mortal wisdom, is he who, if he use his mind aright, has the clearest perception of the limits of human knowledge, and the most earnest desires for the lifting of the veil that separates him from the unseen.'-Animal Physiology, by Dr Carpenter, p. 567.

But we pass on from general principles to details, to examine more particularly the theory of descent as proved by homologues, or by repetition of character, in groups of animals of different habits.

We are told that the number of the vertebræ forming the neck of the giraffe and the elephant, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight successive modifications.' This argument is of course applicable to the human form also, and we may therefore add man to the giraffe and elephant, so that the argument would be that the elephant, giraffe, and man are seen to be of the same descent by the number of their cervical vertebræ.