IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



95 





There is no accounting for tastes, yet we 

 may be pardoned for retaining some prefer- 

 ence for the first link of the old Jewish gene- 

 alogical table : " Which was the son of Adam, 

 which was the son of "God." As to the " de- 

 basement" of the fall, it is to be feared that 

 the aboriginal ape would object to bearing the 

 blame of existing human iniquities as having 

 arisen from any improvement in his nature 

 and habits ; and it is scarcely fair to speak of 

 Adam as " formed from a clod of earth," which 

 is not precisely in accordance with the record. 

 As to the "rib," which seems so offensive to 

 Haeckel, one would have thought that he 

 would, as an evolutionist, have had some fel- 

 low-feeling in this with the writer of Genesis. 

 The origin of sexes is one of the acknow- 

 ledged difficulties of the hypothesis, and, using 

 his method, we might surely "assume," or even 

 " confidently assert," the possibility that, in some 

 early stage of the development, the unfinished 

 vertebral arches of the " skin-fibrous layer " 

 might have produced a new individual by a 

 process of budding or gemmation. Quite as 

 remarkable suppositions are contained in some 

 parts of his own volumes, without any special 

 divine power for rendering them practicable. 



