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others. Even where the eggs belong to birds of different species, as to the common Muscovy-duck for example, the hen displays as much affection for the young ducklings, despite the disparity of instinct and habit, as she does had they proceeded from her own eggs. May it not be that parental love has different channels of transmission, and that in such a case as this the emanation from the sitting-hen may be the vehicle of parental love toward the young which are to be hatched? Certain it is that a sitting-hen, as many of us have observed, is altogether a changed being, both in attitude and expression. She is entirely absorbed in the eggs when she is incubating, and, though she may not have the intellect to distinguish a mere lump of chalk from one of her own eggs, yet love is altogether independent of intellect, and may exist in all its vigor, and yet may be wasted on an unworthy object.

Fishes, as is generally known, are not particularly emotional beings, and are not likely to entertain a lasting love for anything. Indeed, in some instances, parental love would be absolutely useless, as in the case of the cod-fish, which could be hardly expected to entertain a special love for each of the countless thousands of young it produces every year. The life of the mother would be an unenviable one, if her lot were to look after her young as soon as they are hatched, especially when the varied foes that beset her eggs as soon as they are produced, are considered. Just as there are fishes that possess conjugal love, so there are fishes that possess parental love, and prominent among these are the sticklebacks. But in the case of these fishes the most curious part is that parental love is shown by the father, and not by the mother, the latter having nothing to do but to lay the eggs, and leaving to the former the exclusive labor of providing for the young.

Enough of instances of true parental love among the lower animals could be given to fill this entire book, but a sufficient number have been adduced to show that the

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feeling is the same in man as in them, although, of course, the mode of manifesting it is different. We have shown the fallacy of the theory that parental love is life-enduring in man and very brief among the animals, and have seen that, in proportion to the duration of life, it is quite as brief among the savages as among the animals. And, again, we have seen where it has been lost and then restored, and also where it was never lost; where in animals, as in man, it has caused complete abnegation of self, the parents living for their children, and not for themselves, and where it has given strength to the weak and courage to the timid. Even the very fishes have been shown to be amenable to the same influences as man, and could we have carried our illustrations still lower down the scale we would have found the same influences existing among much humbler forms of animal existences. In conclusion, there is no resisting the fact that parental love, one of the highest and holiest feelings of which a loving and immortal soul can be capable, is shared equally by man and beast, according to their respective capacities.

LIFE PROGRESSIVE.

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one can doubt that the earth's crust, so far as it has been deciphered by man, presents us with a record, imperfect though it be, of the past. Whether, however, the known and admitted imperfections of its records, geological and palæontological, are sufficiently trustworthy to account satisfactorily for the lack of direct evidence recognizable in some modern hypotheses, may be a matter of individual opinion, but there can be little doubt that they are sufficiently extensive to throw the balance of evidence decisively in favor of some theory of continuity, as opposed to any theory of intermittent and occasional action, which some writers have strenuously and intelligently advocated. No marks of mighty and general convulsions of nature exist, as the seeming breaks which divide the grand series of stratified rocks into numerous isolated formations would indicate. They are simply indications of the imperfection of our knowledge. Science will never, in all probability, point to a complete series of deposits, or to a complete succession of life, which shall link one geological period to another. But that such deposits and such an unbroken succession must have existed at one time we may well feel sure, and stand ready to believe that nowhere in the long series of fossiliferous rocks has there been a total break, but that there has inevitably been a complete continuity of life, as well as a more or less complete continuity of sedimentation from the Laurentian period to the present day. One generation, speaking figuratively, hands on the lamp of life to the next, and each system of rocks is the direct offspring

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