88 DARWIJSflANA. 



be believed that the perusal of tlie new book '' On the 

 Origin of Species by Means of JSTatural Selection" 

 left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plau- 

 sible and winning ways. We were not wholly unpre- 

 pared for it, as many of our contemporaries seem to 

 have been. The scientific reading: in which we induls'e 

 as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim 

 forebodings. Investigations about the succession of 

 species in time, and their actual geographical distribu- 

 tion over the earth's sui'f ace, were leading up from all 

 sides and in various ways to the question of their 

 origin. ]^ow and then we encoimtered a sentence, 

 like Prof. Owen's " axiom of the continuous operation 

 of the ordained becoming of living things," which 

 haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our con- 

 ce]3tion must needs be as to what such oracular and 

 grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt con- 

 fident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. 

 Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of 

 trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and 

 makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. 

 Ai^res nous le deluge. Still, not to lag behind the 

 rest of the world, we read the book in which the new 

 theory is promulgated. "We took it up, like our 

 neighbors, and, as was natural, in a somewhat captious 

 frame of mind. 



Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first 

 chapter. Here the author takes us directly to the 

 barn-yard and the kitchen-garden. Like an honorable 

 rural member of our General Court, who sat silent 

 mitil, near the close of a long session, a bill requiring 

 all swine at large to wear pokes was introduced, when 



