FIRST DAY'S SITTING. 29 



fossil remains which they can prove to be those of the 

 progenitors of any race of animals now living on the earth. 

 Have they found fossil remains which they can prove to 

 belong to the progenitors of the eagle, or of the horse, or 

 of the donkey, or the whale of any creature, in short, 

 from a mouse or a mole up to a man? I am aware, indeed, 

 that fossil remains of animals thought to resemble the 

 horse have been found, but Mr. Darwin might as easily 

 prove that the donkey is descended from the dromedary, 

 as that the horses of the present day are descended from 

 the Hippotherium. 



Lord G. And yet some naturalists are of this opinion. 



Homo. That, my Lord, may very easily be accounted for. 



'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view ; 



distance, aided by these three most potent auxiliaries, 

 Ignorance, Imagination, and Presumption. TVhy, my 

 Lord, if these extinct forms were now living around us, 

 naturalists would no more venture to affirm them to be the 

 progenitors -of the horse, than they dare tell us that our 

 cats are descended from the Bengal tiger, or our dogs 

 from the African lion ; or to take, perhaps, a more 

 apposite case that the gorilla is the father race to the 

 gibbon and the chimoanzee. Why is it, my Lord, that 

 naturalists do not come into the light of existing facts, and 

 point out to us some living species that has sprung from 

 some other living species ? They know that existing facts 

 would not bear them out. Hence they grope their way, by 

 the aid of fossil bones, millions of ages back into the past ; 

 and there, amid its pitchy darkness, they fancy they see tho 

 desired transformations taking place. Worms become ^ 

 fishes, and fishes change "insensibly " into fowls ! Amphi- 

 bians produce reptiles, and reptiles become the nurses 



