160 OKGAtfS OF EXTREME PERFECTION. 



membrane. What seems plainer than that the long toes,, 

 not furnished with membrane of the Grallatores, are formed 

 for walking over swamps and floating plants ? The water- 

 hen and landrail are members of this order, yet the first is 

 nearly as aquatic as the coot, and the second is nearly as 

 terrestrial as the quail or partridge. In such cases, and 

 many others could be given, habits have changed without a 

 corresponding change of structure. The webbed feet of the 

 upland goose may be said to have become almost rudiment 

 tary in function, though not in structure. In the frigate- 

 bird, the deeply scooped membrane between the toes shows 

 that structure has begun to change. 



He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of 

 creation may say, that in these cases it has pleased the 

 Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of one 

 belonging to another type ; but this seems to me only restat- 

 ing the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the 

 struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selec- 

 tion, will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly 

 endeavoring to increase in numbers ; and that if any one 

 being varies ever so little, either in habits or structure, and 

 thus gains an advantage over some other inhabitant of the 

 same country, it will seize on the place of that inhabitant, 

 however different that may be from its own place. Hence 

 it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and 

 frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the dry land and 

 rarely alighting on the water, that there should be long-toed 

 corncrakes, living in meadows instead of in swamps ; that 

 there should be woodpeckers where hardly a tree grows ; 

 that there should be diving thrushes and diving Hymen- 

 optera, and petrels with the habits of auks. 



ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION. 



To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contri- 

 vances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for 

 admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction 

 of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been 

 formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd 

 in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun 

 stood still and the world turned round, the common-sense of 

 mankind declared the doctrine false ; but the old saying of 

 Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be 

 trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gra- 



