DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 141 



All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the 

 attempt to explain scientifically how any designed 

 result is accomplished savors of impropriety. 



In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the 

 patent fact that " perfection here below " is relative, not 

 absolute — and illustrating this by the circumstance 

 that European animals, and especially plants, are now 

 proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than 

 many of the indigenous ones — that " the correction for 

 the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not 

 to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the 

 eye." And then follows the second extract of the 

 reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer 

 upon his own interpretation of these passages ? If he 

 insists that green woodpeckers were specifically created 

 so in order that they might be less liable to capture, 

 must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones 

 were specifically made of these colors in order that 

 they might be more liable to be caught ? And would 

 an explanation of the mode in which those wood- 

 peckers came to be green, however complete, convince 

 him that the color was undesigned? 



As to the other illustration, is the reviewer 30 com- 

 plete an optimist as to insist that the arrangement 

 and the weapon are wholly perfect (quoad the insect) 

 the normal use of which often causes the annual fatally 

 to injure or to disembowel itself ? Either way it seems 

 to us that the argument here, as well as the insect, 

 performs hari-kari. The Examiner addj? : 



"We should in like manner object to the word favorable, as 

 implying that some species are placed by the Creator under wn- 

 favorable circumstances, at least under such as might be ad- 

 vantageously modified." 



7 



