POSTSCRIPT. 203 



a pair of forceps, and a set of claws allowed to be the most curved 

 of all apart from those of the raptorial birds. According to Dr. 

 Whewell's ideas of design, we must regard this accommodation 

 of bill and claws to a clambering life on the body of another 

 animal, as only to be accounted for by supposing the Deity first 

 to contemplate the existence of cattle with larvae deposited in 

 their hides, and then to perform the individual act of creating the 

 pique-lxEuf, with its peculiar claws and beak. The opposite 

 theory sees in the pique-bceuf only a kind of starling — for it is 

 allied to that genus — which has in the course of time been 

 modified by natural forces in its constitution, to suit a mode of 

 life to which the temptation was placed before it — just such in- 

 herent forces as enable one human being to become expert in 

 music, another in reasoning, and so on, though coming to more 

 tangible results. Now I will not here pause upon the compara- 

 tive merits of the two theories, in regard of their attribution of 

 dignity to the Deity ; it is only necessary to remark that the 

 latter view does not necessarily exclude either design, or the 

 Deity, which design is held to imply, for the inherent forces em- 

 ployed in the latter case may have been part of a design, though 

 one of general application, and the wisdom of God may be seen 

 as clearly in the fashion of the pique-bceuf upon the one theory 

 as the other. To such a view of design it seems to me unavoidable 

 that we should come, if we are to look in that direction for proofs 

 of Deity at all, for how can we see rudimentary organs in animals 

 to whom they are useless, and yet maintain that each animal was 

 specially designed and framed ? Yet Dr. Whewell has been 

 able to read both the Vestiges and the Ejrplanations without 

 seeing this. 



Dr. Whewell afterwards indulges in the following analogy : — 

 " Let us suppose," says he, " some great sovereign to found a city 

 upon a noble scale, laying it out in streets and markets, and 

 squares and gardens ; designing and building halls of justice and 

 temples, palaces and manufactories, shops and private dwellings. 

 Let it be supposed, too, that the founder has in his mind some 

 special style of architecture, so deeply imprinted, that all the 



