THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 57 



moister soils in search of insects or roots, as Woodcocks; and 

 others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain 

 aquatic insects. All which seem to have been gradually pro- 

 duced during many generations, by the perpetual endeavour of 

 the, creatures to supply the want of food ', and to have been deli- 

 vered to their posterity with constant improvement of them, for 

 the purposes required. 



"Would it then be too bold to imagine, that all warm- 

 blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which 

 the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power 

 of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, di- 

 rected by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations ; and 

 thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own 

 inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements 

 by generation to its posterity, world without end !" Id. vol. i. 

 p. 505. 



These extracts are not given from any disrespect to the abi- 

 lities or intentions of the writers, for they were both men to 

 whom science is much indebted, but to show what strange and 

 startling conclusions may be arrived at by arguing from pre- 

 mises that are not founded on proved facts, but on plausibility 

 and fashionable hypothesis merely. But we will now main- 

 tain unhesitatingly, that it was not man or his domestication, 

 or any inherent tendency in the creatures themselves, that gave 

 feathered crests to the Poland Fowl, dwarfed the Bantam, ex- 

 panded the Dorking, enlarged the Malay and Cochin-China 

 Fowl, inspired courage to the Game Cock, or made the Hen, 

 next to Woman, the most exemplary of mothers : unless we 

 believe it was Man who arranged the strata in the ribs of the 

 earth, and prescribed to the sea its everchanging boundaries. 

 Man is powerful to have dominion; God alone is potent to 

 create His Providence to overrule. Not by Man, nor Chance, 

 nor by generative force of an idol called Nature, have the 

 things which we see, and the diversities in our living fellow- 



