BY MRS MILLER Ir. 



the theories of the " Vestiges" since the publication of the 

 "Foot-prints," unless we accept in that light Mr Darwin's 

 book on the " Origin of Species." While we wish to speak 

 of this work with the respect due to an accomplished na- 

 tui-alist, we must express our belief that it labours under two 

 disadvantages. Its style is very much less lucid than that 

 of the " Yestiges," and so it is less fitted to become widely 

 popular ; and it likewise suffers from the want of implicit 

 faith on the part of its author. This latter defect probably 

 arises from the scientific character of his mind, which makes 

 his theories, in so far as he ventures to carry them out, partly 

 the result of personal investigations, and not altogether of 

 hearsay evidence. 



Mr Darwin seems to believe, or to wish to believe, in the 

 thorough transmutation of species, — that any one species, how 

 different soever it may be, can, by a gradual process within 

 the lapse of ages, be changed into any other species, without 

 regard to the element to which it may have belonged. " See- 

 ing," says he, " that we have fiying birds and mammals, fly- 

 ing insects of the most diversified types, and formerly had 

 flying reptiles, it is conceivable that flying-fish, which now 

 glide far through the air, slightly rising and turning by the 

 aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified into 

 perfectly winged animals. If this had been effected, who 

 would have ever imagined that in an early transitional state 

 they had been inhabitants of the open ocean, and had used 

 their incipient organs of flight exclusively, as far as we know, 

 to escape being devoured by other fishes V* 



Mr Darwin, however, does not believe, with the author of 

 the " Yestiges," that all life has been developed from micro- 



