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est of birds of the air, an owl. All these architectural 

 and sepulchral habits, these Egyptian manners of the 

 sand-martin, digging caves in the sand, and border- 

 trooper's habits of the chimney swallow, living in round 

 tovrers instead of open air, belong to them as connected 

 with the tribe of the falcons through the owls ! and not 

 oidy so, but with the mammalia through the bats ! A 

 swallow is an emancipated owl, and a glorified bat ; but it 

 never forgets its fellowship with night. 



58. Its ancient fellowship, I had nearly written ; so 

 iiatural is it to think of these similarly- minded creatures, 

 when the feelings that both show are evidently useless to 

 one of them, as if the inferior had changed into the 

 higher. The doctrine of development seems at first to 

 explain all so pleasantly, that the scream of consent with 

 which it has been accepted by men of science, and the 

 shriller vociferation of the jDublic's gregarious applause, 

 scarcely permit you the jjower of antagonist reflection. I 

 nmst justify to-day, in graver tone than usual, the terms 

 in which I have hitherto spoken, — it may have been 

 thought with less than the due resj^ect to my audience, — 

 of the popular theory. 



59. Supposing that the octohedrons of galena, of gold, 

 and of oxide of iron, were endowed with powers of repro- 

 duction, and perished at appointed dates of dissolution or 

 solution, you would without any doubt have heard it by 

 this time asserted that the octohedric form, which was 



common to all, indicated their descent from a common 

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