172 [THE MATHEMATICAL TEST, &c. 



solid content far exceeds the brain. When Mr. Darwin 

 says that ( Natural Selection always acts with extreme 

 slowness, he does not imply that its steps must therefore 

 be so numerous as to be too small to confer any advan- 

 tage. This would be a contradiction in terms. But 

 the steps may be exceedingly small notwithstanding-, 

 and also sometimes separated by enormous intervals 

 of time from one another. 



In introducing his own explanation of thing's, Mr. 

 Bennett affirms that ' resemblances, and resemblances 

 of the most wonderful and perfect kind' in the vegetable 

 kingdom, ' are in no sense mimetic or protective.' This 

 may be so, but it can hardly be said to be proved. 

 When he speaks of ' man's reason ' having ' assisted him 

 so to modify his body as to adapt himself to the circum- 

 stances with which he is surrounded/ and suggests that 

 the instinct of animals may have assisted them also to 

 modify their bodies by slow and gradual degrees to the 

 same purpose, it is difficult to imagine the process in- 

 tended, and still more difficult to see how ' the slow and 

 gradual degrees' will escape the rigid test of mathe- 

 matical calculation which Mr. Bennett has elsewhere 

 applied ; for if the steps are great, they ought not to be 

 permanent ; and if small, they ought not to be useful. 

 A theory which makes it possible for a bee to ' modify 

 its proboscis ' by instinct, or for a man to treat his nose 

 in the same manner by reason, seems harder of digestion 

 than the Darwinian. 



Torquay, Nov. 12, 1870. 



