TRANSMUTABLE. 79 



favoured forms must become extinct. To illus- 

 trate his meaning upon this subject, Mr. Darwin 

 tells us to take a "carnivorous quadruped, of 

 which the number that can be supported in any 

 country has long ago arrived at its full average." 

 Then he argues that only the descendants of 

 this carnivor which vary can live, (and this by 

 assuming new habits,) some being enabled to 

 live on a change of prey, some inhabiting new 

 stations, climbing trees, frequenting water, and 

 some becoming perhaps less carnivorous. 



Perhaps the domains of science cannot afford 

 a more purely gratuitous assumption than this, 

 and one at the same time totally opposed to 

 Mr. Darwin's own theory, that transmutation 

 only takes place by very slow changes, acting 

 through myriads of years. But, supposing the 

 ground occupied by the original race of carnivora, 

 whose average amount was made up, what be- 

 came of these descendants during the process 

 of modification? One has to have its organi- 

 zation altered for climbing trees; but if it has 

 to wait for myriads of years before it can effect 

 this, how does it exist and multiply? Another 

 has to get its living in water, in fact, to be 

 degraded in organization; but what became of 

 it during the immensity of time it was being 

 metamorphosed? Fancy a fox and descendants 

 gazing at some fish in the water for a hundred 

 millions of years, until it pleased natural selec- 

 tion to convert it into an otter ! And yet Mr. 

 Darwin's theory does violence of this kind to 



