CHARLES BAR WIN. 193 



quietly sleeping after its lunch of beaver, he plunged his keen hunting-knife into 

 its throat, killing it instantly. Then making an incison in its breast he carefully 

 drew through it the body and thighs, leaving the skin intact. Next he stretched 

 the wings out to their full length and in this position bound them firmly to the 

 shaft of his spear with the strings which had held his beavers. His arrangements 

 were now complete, and dragging the skin to the mouth of the cave he crawled 

 into it leaving his head protruding from the hole in its breast and boldly leaped 

 off into space. His project was a complete success, and to his great delight he 

 found himself slowly descending in graceful circles toward the earth. He alight- 

 ed in safety and taking two of the feathers of the bird — as much as he could carry 

 — he started homeward, and on the evening of the third day after his capture he 

 was seated before his lodge relating to his friends his wonderful adventure. 



Often as the traveler journeys over the western plains he will see a tall col- 

 umn of dust suddenly rise and after whirling along a short distance as suddenly 

 disappear. This the Indians say is caused by the "Thunder-Bird," who, when 

 she descends to snatch a serpent for her young thus conceals herself from mortal 

 sight. And sometimes when the air is pure and the skies are clear the Indian 

 thinks that far away in the western sky he can see that place to which the hunter 

 was borne and from which he so miraculously escaped — perhaps some summer' 

 cloud which lies weltering upon the horizon which his " untutored mind" im- 

 agmes is the rocky home of the "Thunder-Bird." 



. CHARLES DARWIN. 



BY JOHN FISKE. 



It is fitting that in the great Abbey, where rests the ashes of England's 

 noblest heroes, the place of the discoverer of natural selection should be near 

 that of Sir Isaac Newton. Since the publication of the immortal Principia, no 

 scientific book has so widened the mental horizon of mankind as the Origin of 

 Species. Mr. Darwin, like Newton, was a very young man when his great dis- 

 covery suggested itself to him. Like Newton, he waited many years before 

 publishing it to the world. Like Newton, he lived to see it become part and 

 parcel of the mental equipment of all men of science. The theological objection 

 urged against the Newtonian theory by Leibnitz, that it substituted the action ot 

 natural causes for the immediate action of the Deity, was also urged against the 

 Darwinian theory by Agassiz ; and the same objection will doubtless continue to 

 be urged against scientific explanations of natural phenomena so long as there 

 are men who fail to comprehend the profoundly theistic and religious truth that 

 the action of natural causes js in itself the immediate action of the Deity. It is 

 interesting, however, to see that, as theologians are no longer frightened by the 

 doctrine of gravitation, so they are already outgrowing their dread of the doctrine 

 of natural selection. On the Sunday following Mr. Darwin's death. Canon 



