Gl 



postulates that I claim are, Accident, Ignorance, and Exter- 

 mination. By these three acting together, all that is called 

 Creation came into being as we see it. To be sure. 



I believe, for I cannot deny, that one of the Trilobite family, 

 the Asaphus tyrannus, has no fewer than 6,000 facets to each of 

 its eyes, and Buckland states that it was " created in the fulness 

 of perfection," or to use my own words, " as perfect as 

 possessed by any of the articulate class." I have, no doubt t 

 contended that it takes millions upon millions of ages, each 

 million with millions upon millions of failures, to make anything 

 like an eye at all ; yet, as here we find a perfect eye in the 

 Trilobite, whose fossil remains are found in the most ancient of 

 all the formations, and which, therefore, in the words of Ansted, 

 must have been among " the earliest of created beings," this- 

 fact, I say, staring me hi the face, I "see no difficulty" whatever 

 in it, by simply " imagining " that it must have been gradually 

 coming to that state of perfection in billions upon billions of ages 

 before the beginning. You understand, do you not ? Nothing can 

 be more plain or simple. It merely is an instance of the " us& 

 of the Imagination in Science," Tyndall's grand discovery of 

 which is the greatest fact in modern philosophy. You may say, 

 if you please, that it is all fiction, and that it is only to " darken 

 counsel without knowledge," and so on. Leave that to me ; I 

 know better. 



I believe that if "humble bees were to become rare in any 

 country," it "might be a great advantage to red clover" to have 

 a shorter flower, so that the "hive bee should visit its flowers." 

 " Thus I can understand how a flower and a bee might slowly 

 become, either simultaneously, or one after another, modified and 

 adapted in the most perfect manner to each other." This, you 

 see, would be of mutual advantage to both of them, the bee 

 getting honey and the clover fertility ; but, of course, this could 

 only be after the destruction of millions of races of bees and ditto 

 ditto of clover till they became suited to each other. You may 

 exclaim with Dominie Sampson, Prodigious ! Prodigious ! ! 

 Prodigious ! ! ! Well, perhaps it is. Yon may add, too, if you 

 like, that it must be exceedingly kind of the bees, as they have 



