TRANSMUTABLE. 161 



be necessary that these animals should have some 

 means of eluding their enemies, and also that 

 they should be endowed with great powers of re- 

 production, or else those destined to feed upon 

 them would become exterminated. 



Here Mr. Darwin's theory obviously fails, 

 while the truth of special creation stands out 

 with unassailable force. Let us look for a 

 moment at our oxen, sheep, and pigs. As a 

 rule those animals are slaughtered throughout 

 the world, and only exceptionally die a natural 

 . death. That this is essential to the life of man, 

 no one but a vegetarian would doubt for a 

 moment. His teeth and digestive organs are 

 formed for feeding upon a mixed diet, of animal 

 and vegetable structure. Now it could not be 

 for the good of the ox, or the sheep, or the pig, 

 that it should be so altered from the form of 

 its ancestor, as to become essential to the life of 

 man, and therefore should always die a violent and 

 often a cruel death! Had natural selection so 

 altered the forms of these animals that they 

 could not have been eaten by man, and therefore 

 escaped the knife of the butcher ; then man himself 

 could not have existed, which, I think, is 

 bringing Mr. Darwin's argument to a reductio 

 ad absurdam. 



But, as vegetarians may have a voice in the 

 matter, what of those animals, and they are a 

 vast number, included in the great order Car- 

 nivora, lions, tigers, lynxes, ounces, wolves, 

 foxes, hysenas, civets, ichneumons, weasels, bears, 



