TRANSMUTABLE. 127 



a gill-breathing fish from a flying squirrel? 



How opposed also to sound induction is the 

 statement that an immense group, like that of 

 the mammalian, including forms so different, should 

 have had a common origin, and then illustrating 

 the idea by some resemblance between the mem- 

 bers of the smallest order of the class, containing 

 in fact but one family. Why not shew us a 

 sport back to the horse or the ass in the camel, 

 the elk, the giraffe, the antelope, the sheep, 

 goat, buffalo, or ox? 



Absurd as these questions may appear, they 

 are justified by Mr. Darwin's views. "No doubt," 

 he says, "it is a surprising fact that characters 

 should re-appear after having been lost for many, 

 perhaps for hundreds, of generations." (Page 

 1GO.) But why if hundreds, not thousands? 

 Who but the hand that made and designed, 

 shall dare to limit? Mr. Darwin has not left 

 us in doubt upon this question. He says, at 

 page 161, u As all species of the same genus are 

 supposed, on ray theory, to have descended from 

 a common parent, it might be expected that 

 they would occasionally vary in an analogous 



manner." 



But then, while we are forbidden to confess 

 our ignorance of the laws of special creation, or 

 the interpretation of the Divine mind, we are 

 told that "Our ignorance of the laws of variation 

 is profound. Not in one case out of a hundred 

 can we pretend to assign any reason why this 

 or that part differs, more or less, from the same 



