44 ANNIVEESAET ADDEESS 



Having referred to Charles Darwin, I may say that I have lately 

 read his " Descent of Man " and " Origin of Species." Darwin is 

 a man of wonderful intellect and great powers of mind ; to criticise 

 him would be highly presumptuous on my part ; still, I may very 

 briefly refer to some of his theories, which do not commend them- 

 selves to my limited intellect. I refer pai'ticularly to his theory 

 of the Creation, to which I still prefer the Mosaic narrative. Man, 

 we are told, had his origin in some lower form of animated nature 

 — a mollusc, or a jellyfish, which has gone on rising in the 

 scale of creation thi'ough successive generations, through apes and 

 monkeys, at last culminating in man. I do not believe this. If I 

 believed that I originated in a tadpole, I should believe that I 

 might return to one. Plants, as well as animals, are represented 

 as forming themselves, and assuming attributes, either necessary 

 for their existence, or constituting safeguards against their enemies 

 at their own sweet will. Here is an instance, one of many similar 

 ones. Darwin, talking of the arum, the common " lord and lady," 

 says : " The acrid juice of the arum has been acquired by the herb 

 as a defence against its enemies. Some early ancestors of the arum 

 were molested by goats, rabbits, or other animals, and it has 

 adopted this means of repelling their advances." Referring to 

 insects which seek their sustenance from flowers, and whose visits 

 are essential to their fecundation, he says that most plants "lay 

 themselves out to secure the attention of only two or three varieties 

 of insects," and " tnake their ovaries either too deep or too shallow 

 for the convenience of other kinds." The cameleopard acquired its 

 long neck through some remote ancestors in a time of dearth finding 

 the necessity of reaching beyond their fellows, so as to browse on the 

 higher trees, and then, mating with each other, gradually increasing 

 to the present disproportionate length. It may well be asked why 

 they stopped where they did, for there are still trees out of their 

 reach. And besides, why should goats or deer have contented 

 themselves with their own short necks, and the necessary conse- 

 quence of feeding on the lower branches ? The instinct of the 

 cuckoo, which teaches him to turn out of the nest his foster- 

 brethi'en, he ascribes to the fact that in remote ages some unquiet 

 youngster accidentally performed that operation, and that subse- 

 quently (having paired, I presume, with an equally restless mate) 

 the habit became fixed, and all cuckoos have since acted in accord- 

 ance with it. I must say that these, and numberless other instances, 

 strike me as sheer nonsense. When the greyhound increased his 

 running powers by lengthening his legs, the hare would, I think, 

 have done so in a like degree. Animals of the lower grades would 



