TRANSMUTABLE. 105 



wingless condition, are so by virtue of the disuse 

 of their wings, in consequence of no animals of 

 prey living thereon. The difficulty of the Ostrich, 

 which does live without wings, and among beasts 

 of prey, Mr. D. gets over by imagining that its 

 early progenitor had habits like a bustard, and 

 that "as natural selection increased in successive 

 generations the size and weight of its body, its 

 legs were used more, and its wings less, until they 

 became incapable of ilight!" 



And yet in the same chapter, which contains 

 this improbable absurdity, Mr. Darwin denies that 

 his laws of variation have anything to do with 

 "chance." But what a strange power is this 

 which Mr. Darwin substitutes for "creation." It 

 first develops wings in an ostrich's progenitor, 

 and then allows them to dwindle away as useless 

 appendages ! 



Wingless beetles in Madeira, the eyes of moles, 

 the Styrian cave animals, which, living in dark- 

 ness are blind, all in turn receive Mr. Darwin's 

 notice, and are adduced as instances of the re- 

 tarded development of organs owing to disuse in 

 progenitors. 



This subject has been well handled by Mr. 

 Murray, in a late number of the "Edinburgh 

 Philosophical Journal," and these very blind beetles 

 are adduced as evidence against Mr. Darwin, for 

 it is certainly upon his theory inexplicable that 

 cave beetles should be found in various parts of 

 the world, arid of species closely allied, yet dif- 

 ferent, and yet in all cases blind. How can this 



