296 DARWIXIASISM. 



less ducks. Even Dr. Carpenter here, in the interest of 

 his own originality, is anti-Darwinian enough to point 

 out that the foraminifera, however widely they diverge 

 from their palaeozoic originals, " still remain foraminifera" 

 Aristotle has got hold of a true principle in such cases, 

 when he observes that essential parts are invariable, as 

 the eye itself, but not its colour. When we think of 

 certain shells which are about the most beautiful things 

 in existence, we may be prompted to add form to colour 

 as only an unmotived product on the part of an all- 

 unconscious mollusc, Mr. Beddard remarks, as we have 

 seen, that, in certain cases, " warning colours are futile 

 and sexual coloration impossible ; " and it would seem 

 that, in reference to these shells, not .colour alone, but 

 form also is similarly situated, whether for the one 

 selection or the other. 



One cannot but be reminded here of the general 

 method peculiar to Mr. Darwin by which he would seek 

 to establish his conclusions. " There is an a priori 

 theory," as I say elsewhere, " and then there is a 

 miscellany of remark in regard to facts to support it." 

 That, probably, is but the necessary result of committing 

 oneself to the " scattering and unsure observance " of a 

 common-place book's disarticulatedness. The attempt 

 always is to bring the unconnected cases of the miscellany 

 into something of coherency, by no more vigorous 

 ratiocination than natural conjecture ; at the same time 

 that the very facts themselves are, in consequence of the 

 manner in which they have been taken up, not always 

 to be regarded as more than very loosely founded. We 

 have already seen instances of this stories which, by 

 example of Plato, we have called stories for children ; 

 not that it is to be understood that they belong all of 

 them to Mr. Darwin himself. Such stories as those 

 that concern the spots of the leopard belong rather, so 



