58 De Vi Physica 



the intelligence of the reader to multiply 

 instances. How did the wings of birds and 

 bats and insects originate ? By degrees ? The 

 very notion is ridiculous. With wings 'in 

 the incipient stage ' (to borrow the nonsen- 

 sical ' Darwinism ' based upon nothing in 

 Nature, for nothing in Nature is ' incipient/ 

 or ever has been), wings that were no wings, 

 the animal would never have ' survived ' : 

 still less could it ever have left off trusting 

 to good legs and turned for its safety, during 

 ' the period of transition/ to ' incipient ' 

 wings. The life of winged beings absolutely 

 depends on the power of their wings, as, 

 e.g., bats or bees or butterflies : and often 

 their prey flies nearly as fast as they do 

 themselves. 



1 And so it is universally. There is, in 

 Nature, infinite variety. But whenever you 

 get back to the principle, the fundamentum 

 varietatis, of which the varieties are all 



