123 
Darwin has dwelt much upon man’s power of 
developing pigeons: are there any signs of man’s 
degradation of the domestic fowl, and duck by disuse ; 
any signs of their wings becoming aborted; their power 
certainly being greatly diminished. 
In fact what Mr.Froude has said about history has ten- 
fold truth when applied to Evolution, ‘vt 7s lke a child’s box 
of letters with which we can spell any word we please, we have only 
to pick out such letters as we want ; arvange them as we ltke ; 
and say nothing about those which do not suit our purpose.” 
An instance ofthis kind of manipulation, is found in 
> we are told that 
the first appearance of ‘the Snakes; 
the Reptiles appear long before Man, so early as the 
Carboniferous, an upper Palceozoic period; but we are 
not told that the Snakes are not included among the 
Reptilia, we know these belong to the most recent of the 
Tertiary periods, perhaps even subsequent to Man’s ap- 
pearance. 
It will not be overlooked that the curse pronounced 
upon some creature contemporaneous with Man, “fon 
thy belly shalt thou go,’ would have been quoted against 
the Bible, could it have been proved that the Snakes, 
were already thus degraded defore Man’s appearance. 
The late appearance of the Frogs, and Snakes 
(Ophidian, and Batrachian) in itself overthrows the theory 
of Evolution; seeing that they are the lowest in organi- 
sation of the Reptilian Order: which Order, in the 
Triassic period, when Mammals were but two per cent. 
of existing creatures, rose as high as 27 per cent. Here 
the lowest organisms appear not first but last, here is no 
Evolution. 
An instance of this kind of manipulation may be 
seen in Dr. Réville’s reply to Mr. Gladstone; which I 
comment on in these remarks upon ‘ Evolution.’ 
