DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD, 433 



evidences of "design," which on the doctrine of "special crea- 

 tions " we find in the construction of the original Bird, and in the 

 provision for the continuous propagation of its own type, we equally 

 find in the production of the original "jelly-speck," and in the 

 evolutionary process by which the very lowest type of organization 

 has been progressively elevated to one of the highest. The mar- 

 vellous succession of changes by which a chick is evolved from 

 the germ-spot of the fowl's egg in the short period of two-and- 

 twenty days, assuredly does not become less worthy of our admira- 

 tion, if looked at as the abbreviated repetition of one which has 

 extended continuously over millions of years. 



Let us now consider this question, not in regard to any par- 

 ticular species of Bird, but in regard to the class as a whole, — 

 consisting, as it does at the present time, of many thousands of 

 reputed " species," each of them possessing some particular adap- 

 tation to its own conditions of existence, and hence regarded 

 (according to our former ideas) as a separate product of Creative 

 Design. 



Every Zoologist is aware that the structure of all Birds conforms 

 so closely to a common type, as to make it difficult to divide the 

 class into subordinate groups characterized by well-m.irked dis- 

 tinctions. For these distinctions almost entirely rest on the 

 comparative development, or peculiar shaping, of organs which 

 all alike possess. I remember that on remarking to my friend, 

 Professor Milne Edwards (the successor of Cuvier as the official 

 head of French naturalists), soon after the publication of the 

 " Origin of Species," that I could very well believe that all Birds 

 had descended from a common ancestry, he replied, " I regard 

 " Birds zoologically as constituting but a single family ; " — meaning 

 that their diversities of structure are not greater than those which 

 we find among the members of many single families of Mammals 

 or Reptiles. Now, if we find adequate grounds for the belief that 

 all the Birds which now exist, or ever have existed, are the descend- 

 ants of a common progenitor, and that the special peculiarities of 

 each type have arisen in the course of their "descent with modi- 

 fication," the adaptiveness of each resultant organism is not less 

 an evidence of design, because the aggregate result has been 

 wrought out through a continuous passage from the general type 



