influence of habit, as it is on the part of the neck of the teal (Boschas crecca) to yield corroborative evidence. The constant habit of searching for food in the mud, it is alleged, has given the length of neck to goose and swan. How the teal has missed a long neck must be accounted for by the presence of a certain persistent obduracy in its cervical vertebræ. But the teal may be on the way to a neck proportionally as long as that of the swan. We need to give the species a million or two of years more, and the form of man to be alive at that time will see another proof of the wisdom of his ancestors. Ere then our water rats shall have been selected into ducks, our ducks to geese, our geese to gorillas, and a new type of man would be sure to follow! In the propagation of species, he holds that sexual selection (p. 88) will depend on the vigour of the males, or on their possession of special weapons. In gallinaceous fowls, the cock with the longest and sharpest spurs will, in the latter case, be most successful. But, to use Mr. Darwin's expression, we could give "a long catalogue of facts," which show that, as among men, so it is with the lower animals-the whim, the taste, the fancy of the female, are to be taken into account. Among birds, we have seen a vigorous female choose a poor, emaciated, more dead than alive male, when she might have taken to her a healthy one. Again, in a time of scarcity of food for wolves, we are told (p. 90) that it is clear the fleetest and healthiest is sure to be selected to resist the effects of the famine. It might be the most cunning, yet the weakest; and the selection would thus be of the bad. "All insects," says the author, "pair for each birth" (p. 96); of several families which do not, we refer to the aphides, or plant lice. It is not capable of proof that ornithorhynchus and lepidosiren (p. 107) have survived from geological eras, because exposed to less severe competition in the struggle for existence than other forms which have perished.

The author's theory regarding the original type of the horse (p. 164) would meet a ready refutation were an effort made to cross-breed with a zebra, and then a continued breeding in-and-in had recourse to. The reference to the species of woodpecker at p. 184 is peculiarly unfortunate. The bird referred to is not a true woodpecker, but a species of an allied genus, and one whose structure is in harmony with its habits. The bird to which he refers is the La Plata colaptes (Colaptes campestris). These things are all against the value of this theory even in its pretensions, to a high place in the philosophy of science. The theory, moreover, is directly at variance both with the views of creation given us in Scripture, and of the Creator who formed all life after its

kind. All geology, all botany, and all zoology, testify that species have a real and permanent existence in nature; that they have continued thus under every variety of influence; and that, in each case, they have been ushered into being by the creative act of an All-wise and Allpowerful God.

"Since His word all things produced,
Though chiefly not for glory as prime end,
But to show forth His goodness, and impart
His good communicable to every soul
Freely; of whom what could He less expect
Than glory and benediction, that is, thanks,
The slightest, easiest, readiest recompense."-(Milton.)

END OF VOL. I.