850 DARWINIANISM. 



coming. Out of doors, to say so, there are, of course, a 

 vast number of a sort of business Darwinians, who have 

 been enrolled by conscription, as it were ; but, after all, 

 it is only the judges chosen by Mr. Darwin himself who 

 best deserve our appeal. And these, Hooker apart, are, 

 as we may say once again, Carpenter, Gray, Wallace, 

 Lyell, and Huxley. Wallace, generally, on the whole 

 doctrine, discovers a state of mind so frequently, and, 

 indeed, so critically, an ti- Darwinian that, in strictness, as 

 has been said, he has no business to be called a Darwinian 

 at all. Lyell, from the moment he came properly to know 

 the doctrine, was really, and in point of fact, that doctrine's 

 absolute opponent. Then, as for Huxley, while his Dar- 

 winianism appeared otherwise, as we saw, on the whole, 



has. Nay, as it appears, the very hive-bee has also quite the freedom 

 of this same clover at least in the second crop. Mr. Darwin is only 

 reporting at second-hand here also (" I do not know whether this 

 statement is accurate, nor whether another published statement can 

 be trusted "), and may have seen reason to change his mind. At all 

 events, he is elsewhere, as I say, silent on the point. 



It would thus appear that the connections of red clover, humble- 

 bee, and mouse, either are not, or need not be, so very logical ; and 

 as for cats, however much they may forage for other ends, in garden- 

 grounds or on the roofs of houses, it would be surely only the few 

 who are deserted or starving that would have the heart to encounter 

 the difficulties, discomforts, and abnegations of an open field more or 

 less distant from their usual haunts. 



Here, with insects before us, may I ask, if ever any one has 

 thought of the common flea as, very fairly, a Darwinian difficulty ? 

 It is detected in the blanket by the metalline lustre of its back. 

 Now, considering that the man and his dog, perhaps his cat also, 

 have been Darwinianly existent for some 250,000 years, would it not 

 exemplify a much better logic than the cat, the mouse, the bee, and 

 the clover, if every single flea that could possibly be found in these 

 days were dull in the back or even white ? After such ages and 

 ages of capture, that a flea's back still shines! Pooh! says Mr. 

 Dirwin, that is easy : "The required variation has not yet chanced 

 to occur in the right direction" (ii. 337). 



