THE ORIGIX OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTIOX. 5 



ass, the dog, and the goose represented on the Egyptian 

 monuments of equal antiquity, are the same varieties 

 which exist now. If, then, thousands of years have produced 

 no change at all, it is reasonable to believe that, except in 

 dreams, millions would be equally inoperative. 



If the living beings of the present earth afford no evi- 

 dence in support of the theory of transmutation by natural 

 selection, neither do those which lie buried in the earth's crust ; 

 and this is, indeed, fully admitted by the ingenious author 

 of the theory himself. 'Why,' says he, ' does not every col- 

 lection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation 

 and mutation of the forms of life? ' and he adds, v/ith a candour 

 which is natural to him, ' we meet with no such evidence, 

 and this is the most obvious of the many objections which 

 may be urged against my theory.' The answer to the objec- 

 tion is, that ' the geological record is imperfect.' The imper- 

 fection, however, seems to amount to no more than that the 

 record affords no evidence whatever in favour of the theory 

 of mutation by natural selection, while it is perfect enough in 

 an opposite direction, showing that the lowest forms of life 

 came first into existence, and were followed by a successive 

 series of improvements, ending with man. 



As to ' the struggle for life,' there is no doubt but that, 

 through all living beings, it is the weak that perish and the 

 vigorous that survive. Nature in some cases takes some 

 pains for preserving the integrity of the species, but never for 

 its improvement by mutation. Thus, with some gregarious 

 animals, the vigorous males, to the exclusion of the young and 

 feeble, are the fathers of the flock or herd. At the beginning, 

 according to the theory of natural selection, there could have 

 existed no ' struggle for life,' when a few mo na ds, imj2gicgptlble 

 by the microscope, had the whole earth to themselves. 

 JU Nature, no~doubt, supplies us with wonderful mutations 

 of form and character, but they bear no analogy to those 

 ascribed to the Darwinian theory, which are more extra- 

 vagant than the metamorphoses of Ovid. The tadpole turned 



