TRANSMUTABLE. 141 



Now this is the apparatus by which sight is 

 produced, in forms differing according to the con- 

 dition of the being in the scale of animated ex- 

 istence, in all to whom the faculty is given. 

 But the apparatus and the amount of sight vary 

 strictly according to the position of the animal 

 in the scale of life. And this variation is so 

 great, and in each case so admirably adapted to 

 the peculiar conditions of life, in which the animal 

 exists, that I consider it an insuperable answer 

 to Mr. Darwin's theory; and such is evidently 

 Mr. D.'s own opinion, though anxious to throw 

 the difficulty on imagination rather than on fact. 

 Now then for one or two facts. 



Mr. Darwin says, "Among existing vertebrata 

 we find but a small amount of gradation in the 

 structure of the eye, and from fossil species we 

 can learn nothing on this subject." 



I can hardly believe that this passage was 

 penned with a knowledge of what two such high 

 authorities as Owen and Buckland have written 

 upon the subject. But it is certainly a familiar 

 fact to geologists that the condition of the eye 

 of the Trilobite is well shewn in its fossil con- 

 dition; and in spite of Mr. Darwin's assumption 

 of a pre-silurian world, I must take the liberty of 

 considering the Trilobite one of the first of created 

 things. 



"In the class Crustacea," says Professor Owen, 

 we find a most extensive- and interesting series 

 of gradations leading from the sessile median 

 eye speck to two distinct eyes, provided with all 



