66 "Behold the Birds of the Air' 1 



every object into a text for deep philosophisings, and do 

 what we will we cannot bear ourselves as if we had not 

 his teachings in our ears. Whether we agree with those 

 teachings or disagree, we cannot but recur to them in 

 our observations, nor avoid asking ourselves how they 

 square with the facts falling under our eyes. Such colla- 

 tion of facts and theories is just what modern science 

 impresses on us as a duty ; but, as I have had to confess 

 before, the examination of the simple phenomena which 

 it is in my power to observe, does not serve to impress 

 on my mind the truth of the conclusions most in vogue ; 

 but suggests doubts and disquietudes as to their sound- 

 ness, almost as much as the arbitrary assumptions and 

 dogmatic declamations of the most positive and intolerant 

 of their upholders. 



The cardinal doctrine, as everybody knows, of the new 

 evolutionary creed is that there are no such things in 

 the organic world as species properly so called. That is 

 to say, the various types of animals and plants, which we 

 see around us, are but various modifications of one 

 original, the descendants from which have variously de- 

 veloped into dissimilarity according to the various cir- 

 cumstances in which they have had to struggle for 

 existence. The host of birds, for example, is not a 

 regular army, designedly portioned off into divisions and 

 regiments, but a multitude fortuitously gathered round 

 certain standards upon which in the march of life they 

 have chanced to come; and those who have been led 

 in the same direction, as if stained by the variation of 

 the same soils, present to our eyes what we mistake for 

 a uniform. They are all, to change the metaphor, carved 

 out of the same block ; but the carving has been done 

 by blind forces, not by an artist's hand; it is the heat 

 and the cold, the drought and the deluge, the accidents 

 of climate, of companionship, or of soil, that have 

 determined the forms and features and habits which 

 present themselves to our observation. The Swallow 

 would have been a Sparrow had his ancestors gone 

 through experiences precisely similar to the other's, and 



