202 SUPERPOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION. 



calcareous spindles of the sea-pen, the spines of echinus, and 

 the thin granular plates of the Crustacea. Layers of mussel 

 and pecten shells come next, mixed up with the shells of 

 buccinum, natica, and trochus. Over the shells there occur 

 defensive spines of the dog-fish, blent with the button-like, 

 thorn-set boucles of the ray. And the minute skeletons of 

 herrings, with the vertebral and cerebral bones of cod, rest 

 over these in turn. He finds also well-preserved bits of 

 reed, and a fragment of pine. Higher up, the well-marked 

 bones of the frog occur, and the minute skeleton of a newt ; 

 higher still, the bones of birds of the diver family ; higher 

 still, the skeleton of a porpoise ; and still higher he discovers 

 that of a monkey, resting amid the decayed boles and branches 

 of dicotyledonous plants and trees. He pursues his search, 

 vastly delighted to find his doctrine of progressive develop- 

 ment so beautifully illustrated ; and, last of all, he detects, 

 only a few inches from the surface, the broken remains of 

 the poor sailor. And having thus collected his facts, he sets 

 himself to collate them with his hypothesis. To hold that 

 the zoophytes had been created zoophytes, the molluscs mol- 

 luscs, the fishes fishes, the reptiles reptiles, or the man a man, 

 would be, according to our philosopher, alike derogatory to 

 the Divine wisdom and to the acumen and vigour of the 

 human intellect : it would be " distressing to him to he com- 

 pelled to picture the power of God, as put forth in any other 

 manner than in those slow, mysterious, universal laws, which 

 have so plainly an eternity to work in /" nor, with so large 

 an amount of evidence before him as that which the ditch 

 furnishes, — evidence conclusive to the efiect that creation is 

 but development, — does he find it necessary either to cramp 

 his faculties or outrage his taste, by a weak yielding to the 

 requirements of any such belief. 



Meanwhile the farmer, — a plain, observant, elderly man, 

 — comes up, and he and the philosopher enter into conversa- 



