CLASSIFICATION. 309 



easy to prove to him. that the law of probabilities negatives 

 the assumption. Even supposing fortuitous combinations of 

 attributes might result in organisms that would work, we 

 should still be without a clue to this special mode of com- 

 bination. The chances would be infinity to one against 

 organisms which possessed in common certain fundamental 

 attributes, having also in common numerous non-essential 

 attributes. 



Xo one, again, can allege that such combinations are 

 necessary, in the sense that all other combinations are im- 

 practicable. There is not, in the nature of things, any 

 reason why creatures covered with feathers should always 

 have beaks : jaws holding teeth would, in many cases, 

 have served them equally well or better. The most general 

 characteristic of an entire sub-kingdom, equal in extent 

 to the Vertebrate^ might have been the possession of nicti- 

 tating membranes ; while the internal organizations through- 

 out this sub-kingdom, might have been on many different 



plans. 



If, on the other hand, this peculiar subordination of attri- 

 butes which organic forms display, be ascribed to design, other 

 difficulties suggest themselves. To suppose that a certain 

 plan of organization was fixed on by a Creator, for each vast 

 and varied group, the members of which were to lead many 

 different modes of life ; and that he bound himself to adhere 

 rigidly to this plan, even in the most aberrant forms of the 

 group, where some other plan would have been more appro- 

 priate ; is to ascribe a very strange motive. When we dis- 

 cover that the possession of seven cervical vertebrae is a 

 general characteristic of mammals, whether the neck be im- 

 mensely long, as in the giraffe, or quite rudimentary, as in 

 the whale ; shall we say that though, for the whale's neck, 

 one vertebra would have been equally good, and though, for 

 the giraffe's neck, a dozen would probably have been better 

 than seven, yet seven was the number adhered to in both 

 cases, because seven was fixed upon for the mammalian type ? 



