DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 4^7 



afforded any evidence of the existence of man at the time when 

 these gravel-beds were deposited ; maintaining that their peculiar 

 shapes had been given by accidental collisions. I do not know 

 that any sane man now questions their human production ; and 

 I ask you to follow me in the examination of the evidence which 

 has wrought that universal conviction. We are all familiar with 

 the opening passage of Paley's " Natural Theology : "— " In crossing 

 " a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a s/one, and were 

 " asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer 

 " that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for 

 *' ever : nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity 

 "of this answer. But suppose 1 had found a waU/i upon the 

 " ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to 

 " be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I 

 "had before given — that, for anything I knew, the watch might 

 " have always been there " Now, if you were to " pitch your 

 foot" against one of these Jlin^ implements, you would find it 

 very difficult to account for its condition by any hypothesis of 

 accidental configuration. Flints are found, in considerable 

 numbers, wherever there has been a great denudation of the 

 chalk ; those originally embedded in it having been left on the 

 surface of the ground. You will generally find them whole, but 

 not unfrequently they have undergone fracture. If, in walking 

 through a chalk country, you look at a heap of flints collected 

 by the roadside for mending the road, you will find the greater 

 part of them entire, having shapes that suggest to the naturalist 

 the forms of the sponges, by the silicification of which they were 

 originally produced. You will doubtless find some broken ; but 

 you will never meet with one that even remotely resembles the 

 characteristic "flint implement" of the Amiens and Abbeville 

 gravels. They may have one or two, or perhaps half a dozen, 

 fractured surfaces ; but these are quite irregular, having no rela- 

 tion one to another. Now, a "flint implement" exhibits, perhaps, 

 fifty fractures ; and they are all so related in size and position as 

 to bring out a very definite shape. Yet this consideration alone 

 did not by any means satisfy those who were unwilling to admit 

 the conclusion that this shape had been worked out by human 

 hands. I well remember that when these objects were first 



