PLAN AND PURPOSE IN NATURE. 207 



grinding of surfaces to gravel and clay, immense action of 

 increasing river systems took place, all of which led to that 

 valuable mantle of alluvial soils which clothed the earth's 

 surface for the profit of Man and his subject creatures. 

 Whether we adopt the extreme views held by some as to the 

 omnipotent action of ice alone, or with Sir Joseph Prestwich, 

 Sir William Dawson, Sir Henry Howorth, look also for the 

 immense dispersion of rocks, sifting of gravel into sand and 

 loam, and dejDosit of alluvium to the action of a Flood, or 

 floods by which " the dehcate handling of soft fingered 

 Avater " served its useful purpose, and which, as many 

 believe, led to the fertility (»f surface of the earth, and the 

 alluvial richness along valleys, producing the higher possi- 

 bilities of cultivation of the soil — whether we look to ice 

 alone or to Diluvial action as well — the purposeful results are 

 as plain as need be. 



20 In considering the preparation of the home for coming 

 Man we must not lose sight of the remarkable fact of the 

 existence of those plants, which he found ready to his hand, 

 which he was able to cultivate as cereals, nor of the equally 

 noticeable production of the great classes of domesticable 

 animals among the Ungulates and Carnivores. The more 

 subtle agency which tlie genius of Darwin in the course of 

 thirty years' study brought to light, that of the earthworms, 

 became of immense importance. By the beneficent work of 

 these animals was caused much of the breaking up of mould, 

 smoothing; down of surfaces of soil, and its opening up to 

 the fertilizing influences of warmtli and moisture. 



21 The position here maintained is that the argument from 

 the slow and orderly preparation of the environments for 

 coming life on the globe necessarily implies the existence of 

 Design. The succeeding changes of those environments 

 through the geological ages, ever leading to conditions and 

 potentialities for organic existence ; rising, pausing, and 

 ever-rising towards those in which human life was possible, 

 is unmistakable in its significance — " evolution," " develop- 

 ment," or " creation " apart. Here design, though infinitely 

 long-drawn, is the only conceivable explanation of things. 

 All the changing fashions in biological speculation from 

 natural selection, sexual selection, histological selection of Roux, 

 germinal selection of Weismann, physical selection of more stable 

 elements of Karl Pearson, to selection in general, suffice to keep 

 fully employed the acute and hungry intellects of the present 

 generation of biologists, and these deal in their way with the 



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