TRANSMUTABLE. 55 



maplirodite. For countless ages they eacli go on 

 increasing. Natural law plays her part well at 

 first, and predominates; at length each form 

 varies. The variation becomes permanent, and 

 is transmitted from race to race. Gradually 

 one variation takes one form, another assumes 

 a different one. The "struggle for existence" 

 in a world designed to be peopled, goes on. 

 Myriads of ages pass. Continents are destroyed 

 arid buried beneath the deep, carrying with 

 them every transitional form by which posterity 

 could recognise the power of "natural selection." 

 The dawn of that geological epoch, which we 

 now call the first that came into existence, is 

 attained. But all that has been arrived at by 

 the "laws of variation" are structures similar 

 to those of our coral or sea-weed, oyster, 

 nautilus, or woodlouse. These, then, must have 

 been the progenitors of the present race of man, 

 and every animal on the face of the earth ! 



And now we come to a period in the world's 

 history, according to the Darwinian theory, which 

 can be measured by our knowledge. For hun- 

 dreds of thousands of millions of years since 

 the siluriari epoch there are geological evidences 

 of the life that has been in the world. And 

 what do we see? In that vast period of time 

 we never discern a form which is transitional 

 from one kind of animal or plant to another of 

 a different class! But these forms must have 

 been at work; a variation occurring here pro- 

 duces a fish, there a lobster; now we see a 



