CHAPTEK XIII. 



EVOLUTION AND NATURAL SELECTION. 



Enkindled in the mystic dark, 



Life built herself a myriad forms, 

 And, flashing its electric spark, 



Through films, and cells, and pulps, and worms, 

 Flew shuttlewise above, beneath, 

 Weaving the web of life and death. 



MatUilde Blind. 



The world moves on in singing harmony 

 Her steps of eon length; from primal cloud, 

 First through her realms old Chaos calls aloud; 



Then, splashing in the Mesozoic sea, 



Huge heralds of the beauty yet to be, 

 Her saurian monsters rise; they pass away, 

 And lo! the glories of a better day, 



And man, the God-within, not fully free. 



American Fabrian. 



now approach tlie subject which, in popular esti- 

 mation, and perhaps in real importance, may be held to 

 be the great scientific work of the nineteenth century 

 the establishment of the general theory of evolution, by 

 means of the special theory of the development of the 

 organic world through the struggle for existence and its 

 necessary outcome, Natural Selection. Although in 

 the last century Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and the 

 poet Goethe, had put forth various hints and suggestions 

 pointing to evolution in the organic world, which they 

 undoubtedly believed to have occurred, no definite state- 

 ment of the theory had appeared till early in the present 



