PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 



753 



around him. lie had a brain which could devise and invent, a memory 

 which enabled him to accumulate experience, and a strong power of 

 sympathy which made him a highly social being, combining with oth- 

 ers in the struggle for life. 



^A/^^;^^^to^]jAD^^EjD^^^ 



Fig. 11. 



At one time naturalists looked upon the animal kingdom as com- 

 plete from the beginning, and, when it became certain that different 

 kinds of animals had appeared from time to time upon the earth, the 

 naturalists of fifty years ago could have no grander conception than 

 that new creatures were separately made (they scarcely asked them- 

 selves how), and put into the world as they were wanted. 



But a higher and better explanation was soon to be found, for there 

 was growing up among us the greatest naturalist and thinker of our 

 day, that patient searcher after truth, Charles Darwin, whose genius 

 and earnest labors opened our eyes gradually to a conception so deep, 

 so true, and so grand, that side by side with it the idea of making an 

 animal from time to time, as a sculptor makes a model of clay, seems 

 too weak and paltry ever to have been attributed to an Almighty 

 Power. 



VOL. XXII. 18 



