246 OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 



The scheme under consideration is open to the same ob- 

 jection with other conjectures of a similar tendency, viz. a 

 total defect of evidence. No changes, like those which the 

 theory requires, have ever been observed. All the changes 

 in Ovid's Metamorphoses might have been effected by these 

 appetencies, if the theory were true ; yet not an example, 

 nor the pretence of an example is offered, of a single 

 change being known to have taken place. Nor is the or- 

 der of generation obedient to the principle upon which this 

 theory is built. The mammae* of the male have not van- 

 ished by inusitation ; ncc surtorvm, per midta scecula, Jv- 

 dcBoriim propagiiu deest prapidinm. It is easy to say, and 

 it has been said, that the alterative process is too slow to be 

 perceived ; that it has been carried on through tracts of im- 

 measurable time ; and that the present order of things is 

 the result of a gradation of which no human records can 

 trace the steps. It is easy to say this ; and yet it is still 

 true that the hypothesis remains destitute of evidence. 



The analogies which have been alleged are of the fol- 

 lowing kind. The buneh of a camel, is said (o be no oth- 

 er than the effect of carrying burthens ; a service in which 

 the species has been employed from the most ancient times 

 of the world. The first race, by the daily loading of the 

 back, would probably find a small grumous tumour to be 

 formed in the flesh of that part. The next progeny would 

 bring this tumour into the world with them. I'he life, to 

 which they were destined, would increase it. The cause, 

 which first generated the tubercle, being continued, it would 

 go on, through every succession, to augment its size, till it 

 attained the form and the bulk under which it now appears. 

 This may serve for one instance ; another, and that also of 

 the passive sort, is taken from certain species of birds. 

 Birds of the crcme kind, as the crane itself, the heron, bit- 

 tern, stork, have, in general, their thighs bare of feathers. 

 This privation is accounted for from the habit of wading in 

 water, and from the effect of that element to check the 

 growth of feathers upon these parts ; in consequence of 

 which, the health and vegetation of the feathers declined 

 through each generation of the animal ; the tender down, 

 exposed to cold and wetness, became weak, and tUin, and 



* I confess myf=elf totally at a loss to guess at the reason, either final 

 or efficient, for this part of the animal frame, unless there be some 

 foundation for an opinion, of which I draw the hint from a paper of Mr. 

 Everard Home's, (Phil. Transac. 1799, p. 2.) viz. that the mammas of 

 the foetus may be formed before the sex is determined. 



