40 



flight of fancy than even this. You may ask liow a bird, that 

 gets its living by flying, could exist for a day without being able 

 to fly, until perhaps one wing at first, or half of one, or only a 

 quill feather or two, or only the remainder of one. Ask ! 



I believe that all this is much more scientific than the opinions 

 to the contrary held by such men as Cuvier and Owen, Agassiz 

 and Phillips, Jones and Sedgwick. They never knew how to 

 interpret Nature as I do. 



I believe that a " well-developed tail " in an aquatic animal 

 might " come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes " in a land 

 animal. But how it came to be formed in the aquatic animal, 

 this deponent sayeth not. Natural Selection being an exceed- 

 ingly slow process, these aquatic animals must have been for 

 thousands of millions of years without any tail at all to begin 

 with. No doubt, in time, they began to be formed, or rather to 

 form themselves, or how could they be as they are, which you 

 cannot deny ? It is true that a fish without a tail must havo 

 been a queer sort of a creature, an " odd fish," perhaps you will 

 say. You may say what you like, but " all is fish that comes to 

 my net," as I 'have said before. So it was before ''their tails 

 were formed," so it was in those " good old times," and so it 

 came to pass that in due time the tail of a shark got to be 

 " worked in " for the tail of a cow, and that of a herring for 

 that of an ass. Kven the old nursery tale tells you that they 

 41 brought their tails behind them." All a priori to posteriori, 

 you see. Credite poster! .' 



I believe that " it certainly is not true that the new organs 

 appear suddenly in any class ;" but if you had had a microscope 

 of sufficiently strong power, let me tell you, you would have 

 discovered if only the hundred thousandth part of such a tail ab 

 in tin,- cou , the giraffe, or the ass, just as I have said. 

 You need not tell me that to ask you to believe all this is to ask 

 you tu be 1. How can that In- \\-\\wi it comes from me? 



I believe that it was so, though what conceivable use it could 

 have been to that animal as a " fly-flapper," even when it grew 

 to be an inch long (for I do not pretend to say that it came />er 

 saltum), you must 10 one else to tell you. It is no affair 



of mine. There are wheels within wheels, you know. 



