THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



recesses of the Kentucky caves, as did European 

 animals into the caves of Europe. We have some 

 evidence of this gradation of habit ; for, as Schi- 

 odte remarks, 'animals not far remote from ordi- 

 nary forms, prepare the transition from light to 

 darkness. Next follow those that are constructed 

 for twilight; and, last of all, those destined for 

 total darkness.' By the time that an animal has 

 reached, after numberless generations, the deepest 

 recesses, disuse will on this view have more or 

 less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural 

 selection will often have effected other changes, 

 such as an increase in the length of the antennae 

 or palpi, as a compensation for blindness. 



". . . . Far from feeling any surprise that some 

 of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as 

 Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, 

 the Ambfyopsis, and as is the case with the blind 

 Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, 

 I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient 

 life have not been preserved, owing to the less 

 severe competition to which the inhabitants of 

 these dark abodes will probably have been ex- 

 posed.'"* 



Lone and barren rocks rising abruptly out of 

 the solitary ocean often teem with animal life to 

 an amazing extent, where the navigator might 

 reasonably have looked for utter silence and deso- 

 lation. For these are the resort of millions of 

 oceanic birds, affording to these, Whose proper 

 home is on the wide and shoreless sea, the spots of 

 solid matter which they require for the laying of 

 their eggs and the hatching of their young. This 



* Op. eft., p. 137. I am very far, indeed, from accepting Mr. 

 Darwin's theory to the extent to which he pushes it, completely 

 trampling on Revelation as it does; hut I think there is a 

 measure of truth in it. 



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