AUTHORITIES USED, COMPILATION, ETC. 155 



and single man privileged to see " the first step by which 

 conversion of a bear into a whale would be easy, would 

 offer no difficulty ? " " In North America the black bear 

 was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely 

 open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects 

 in the water!" (See Origin, p. 141 ; see also Darwin 

 to Lyell on the case,ii. 234, 235, 336.) If one consults 

 the Descent of Man, one will find in it three references to 

 a Hearne, no doubt the same. " Hearne, an excellent 

 observer " " that excellent observer Hearne," cries Mr. 

 Darwin ; and his authority in the footnote is, " A Journey 

 from Prince of Wales Fort, 1796." That is almost a 

 hundred years ago ; surely by this time the bear will 

 have got flippers, or at least the bulbs of them ! 



As we see, it was Mr. Darwin's habit to " collect facts 

 on a wholesale scale," by " printed inquiries," by " con- 

 versation," and by " extensive reading; "'and the result, 

 " an immense number of facts collected from various 

 sources," including this fact also, that " facts observed by 

 others were (by him) very extensively used." Printed 

 inquiries sent out to all and sundries, gardeners, breeders, 

 dog-merchants, conversations as at the gin-palace in the 

 Borough, an indiscriminate miscellaneous reading on the 

 watch simply for any notice of a fact to wish, surely 

 such a method as this of compilation, if not loose, might 

 be quite righteously termed " easy." So it is that, on the 

 evidence of a single, we may almost say unknown man, 

 Hearne, who wrote, may we not also almost say, an 

 unknown book, nearly a hundred years ago, it is ex- 

 pected of us to believe the prodigious assertion, the 

 actual miracle, that by swimming in water with an 

 open mouth catching insects, " the conversion of a bear 

 into a whale would be easy, would offer no difficulty ! ' 

 There are readers, doubtless, who will say here, this is 

 malicious this is the making of a single extreme case 



