TIIAKSMUTABLE. 65 



Darwin reconcile this statement with his opinion 

 given towards the end of the book. That u as 

 all living forms of life are lineal descendants of 

 those which lived long before the siluriari epoch, 

 we may feel certain that the ordinary succession 

 by generation has never once been broken, and 

 that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. 

 Hence we may look with some confidence to a 

 secure future of equally inappreciable length" 

 (Page 489.) 



Now, according to Mr. Darwin, the reason why, 

 in a few thouand years, the world will be able 

 to hold and support its human inhabitants, must 

 be that the "struggle for existence," and "natural 

 selection" will have so altered the ever- varying 

 animal form, that it will have "progressed fur- 

 ther towards perfection." (Page 489.) If the 

 world will not hold us in a few thousand years, 

 and yet we are to look forward to an earthly 

 future as long as Mr. Darwin's pre-silurian world, 

 and the geological and historic period, I , see no 

 other way of getting out of the dilemma but by 

 interpreting Mr. Darwin's theory as above. But 

 Dr. Darwin has himself told us there will be this 

 change. "Judging from the past, we may safely 

 infer that not one living species will transmit 

 its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And 

 of the species now living, very few will trans- 

 mit progeny of any kind to a far distant 

 futurity." 



Now, if we look at page 18, we shall read, 

 "But Mr. Homer's researches have rendered it 



