Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. 63 



That animals retain their mental individuality is 

 unquestionable. When my voice awakened a train of 

 old associations in the mind of the above-mentioned 

 dog. he must have retained his mental individuality, 

 although every atom of his brain had probably under- 

 gone change more than once during the interval of five 

 years. This dog might have brought forward the 

 argument lately advanced to crush all evolutionists, 

 and said, "I abide amid all mental moods and all 

 " material changes. . . . The teaching that atoms leave 

 " their impressions as legacies to other atoms falling 

 " into the places they have vacated is contradictory of 

 " the utterance of consciousness, and is therefore false ; 

 " but it is the teaching necessitated by evolutionism, 

 " consequently the hypothesis is a false one." 4ft 



Sense of Beauty. — This sense has been declared to 

 be peculiar to man. Bat when we behold male birds 

 elaborately displaying their plumes and splendid colours 

 before the females, whilst other birds not thus deco- 

 rated make no such display, it is impossible to doubt 

 that the females admire the beauty of their male part- 

 ners. As women everywhere deck themselves with 

 these plumes, the beauty of such ornaments cannot be 

 disputed. The Bower-birds by tastefully ornamenting 

 their playing-passages with gaily-coloured objects, as 

 do certain humming-birds their nests, offer additional 

 evidence that they possess a sense of beauty. So with 

 the song of birds, the sweet strains poured forth by the 

 males during the season of love are "certainly admired 

 by the females, of which fact evidence will hereafter be 

 given. If female birds had been incapable of appre- 

 ciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments, and voices 



49 



The Rev. Dr. J. M'Cann, ' Anti-Darwinism,' 1869, p. 13. 



