even slight changes in their external relations may cause their death. And all these, and many other calls upon our credulity, are coolly made in the face of an amount of precise information, readily accessible, which would overwhelm any one who does not place his opinions above the records of an age eminently characterized for its industry, and during which that information was laboriously accumulated by crowds of faithful labourers." The very lame answer which our author gives to all the demands which the geologist makes for facts in proof is, that "extinction and natural selection go hand in hand!"

(3) Alleged facts drawn from organic beings now alive. Here as many as are familiar with Mr. Darwin's great abilities as a zoologist will naturally expect "facts" past gainsaying. In noticing this part of the work, its wide-spread circulation will be kept in view, and the remarks made on it will be so put, that readers may refer to the work itself, while those who are not in possession of it will see the weakness of the theory when it is set alongside of well-known phenomena. Very much is made of the want of harmony among naturalists as to the meaning of the word species, and the strong tendency to assign the rank of specific form to organisms which must be regarded as varieties only. Too much stress is laid upon this, and on the mistakes of even great systematists. The interpreters of nature of one generation may make mistakes which their successors in another may be found qualified to correct; but it does not augur the possession of much wisdom for any one to find in the error a vindication of doubt, as to the existence of any such plan in creation as the aggregation of unquestioned phenomena demand. Cuvier had assigned a distinct place to the barnacle under mollusca, but it is now ranked in crustacea under articulata. The removal from the former to the latter should not merely incline any observer to the conclusion, that because Cuvier made a mistake as to the place of the cirripedes, he has not discovered the plan of the Creator in connection with other divisions of the mollusca! On the contrary, these modifications in arrangement as science advances, afford some of the strongest evidences that we are rightly interpreting the Divine plan. It is, moreover, one of the most deeply interesting studies which can be followed by a thoughtful observer, to trace the history of opinion as to the true place in nature of one form of life and another, to see how slowly doubts arose as to their right classification, to note the great gap between their present position and that at which we first meet with them, and to mark the gradual way in which most competent observers come to concur in leaving them in a niche which

WILLIAM MA ENZIE. LASGOW EDINBURGH, LONDON & NEW YORK

had been waiting for them, or from which other forms had to be excluded in order to make room for the pre-ordained occupant.

Most observers have dwelt with pleasure on those points in the zoologic scale, at which one specific form is seen to possess many marks characteristic of another specific form immediately above or below it. The step from the one type to the other is so narrow, that they seem almost to blend. To these, however, the name of distinct species has rightly been given hitherto. Mr. Darwin gives them the name of transitional varieties. He finds in them evidence that the one has been modified into the other, only he has not been able to detect them in the act of change. In all the historical period they have continued just what they now are. One of these so-called transitional varieties is a species of weasel found in North America (Mustela vison). It has webbed feet, and bears much resemblance to the otter, in its fur, its short legs, and in the form of its tail. " "During summer this animal dives for and preys upon fish, but during the long winter it leaves the frozen waters and preys, like other polecats, on mice and land animals." -P. 179. But he need not have gone to North America for an illustration. There is one nearer hand; the common otter (Lutra vulgaris), the link between which and the true weasels is to be found in this "transitional variety." Its usual habitat is fresh water, but Fleming found that in Zetland it frequently took to the sea. In times of scarcity of food it is known to take to the land. "When fish are scarce, it will assume the habits of the stoats and weasels, resorting far inland to the neighbourhood of the farm-yard, and attacking lambs, sucking-pigs, and poultry." Gilbert White's expression, "quadrupeds that prey on fish are amphibious," might have suggested that there is really nothing transitional in Mustela vison. We are no more entitled to conclude that in it we have a weasel about, in course of time, to give up rats and mice for fish only, and to forsake the land for ever, than we are to suppose that Larus argentatus is gradually getting a dislike for herring, and may be soon expected to become a true land bird, because it spends weeks in spring among the arable lands, often many miles from the nearest shore. The webbed foot of Mustela vison is shown by its habits not to have been designed to unfit it, in order to the preservation of the species, for spending a few months on land, for which its make otherwise well adapts it.

Another transitional variety is found in the well-known European dipper, or water ousel (Cinclus Europaeus). The choice is even less fortunate than that of the North American weasel. Its existence

alongside of the true thrushes (Turdidae), and its relation to the antthrushes (Formicarinida), with modifications of form which separate it from both, its tail shorter, its bill stronger, its legs thicker, its feathers denser, with an under-coat of down, as in true divers, than those of thrushes-all suggest distinct specific differences, and not a transitional variety. There are no bristles at the base of the bill, as in turdida and formicarinidæ; its mode of nesting and its eggs differ widely from both. It is just one of those links, which will suggest to most another illustration of how closely one form of life may approach to another, while the Creator keeps them as persistently distinct, as He does those furthest removed from each other-the falconidæ, for example, from the sylviada. "He who believes," says Mr. Darwin, "in separate and innumerable acts of creation, will say, that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of another type; but this seems to me only re-stating the fact in dignified language" (!).-P. 186. Suppose we were not to say this, as indeed we would not, but to say that the structure or instincts of certain members of great types had been so modified by the Creator, as to fit them for habits unlike the general family-would this not be as true in science as it is in our acknowledgment of the direct and special arrangement of the Creator?

The friends of Mr. Darwin are constantly referring to the "facts" which he has given in support of his theory. Now, there are very few facts indeed, if there be any, which can be held to bear direct testimony favourable to it. Some of them may be looked at. "No bee," he says, "but the humble bee visits viola tricolor," one of our most common and prettiest wild violets; and he believes that were humble bees destroyed, this pretty wild flower would soon die out. I have seen the common bee on it. Propagation by offshoots would preserve this pansy, even if it never dropped a seed. Hive-bees, he tells us, cannot get at the nectar in the flower leaf tubes of the common red clover, "because of the shortness of their proboscis." Were they destroyed, the propagation of this plant would cease. But other insects, butterflies and day moths, would perform the same office for it as the humble bee. Besides, it would propagate by offshoots also. Did it not cause Mr. Darwin astonishment, when he recollected that the hivebee has been side by side with the red clover for thousands of years, and yet its attempts to get at the nectar have not resulted in giving greater length to its proboscis? Is not this as unpliant on the part of said proboscis to witness to the truth of Mr. Darwin's theories on the