themselves to their hosts, wliose tissues they waste away with 

 suffering and disease. It is with reference to these creatures that 

 the argument from design is scarcely applicable, except from the 

 creature's own point of view, it being, as I said, well adapted for 

 its vicious career. We shrink from saying, even with such an 

 authority as Van Beneden, that " all these mutual adaptations are 

 pre-arranged." No one can have his attention drawn to them 

 without asking involuntarily. Why were they created ? How came 

 they, part and parcel as they are of evil things, into existence at 

 all ? By no answer that I am acquainted with can the difficulties 

 be completely cleared away ; but they are not so insuperable when 

 viewed in the light of the Development Theory. I shall not forget 

 the relief that came to my mind when I found it possible to regard 

 them (as I find all great authorities regard them) as creatures that 

 have missed tbeir way in the world ; that were started with good 

 opportunities and advantages, but somehow or other have gone off 

 the right track. It is much easier to believe this than that they 

 were designed for the work they are now doing. 



If you ask me how or why they got off the track, how or why 

 they missed their way, I have no reply. The existence of physical 

 evil is a greater mystery to me than that of moral evil. The diffi- 

 culties of the two run to a certain extent in parallel lines. To a 

 certain extent only, for we can easily see how moral evil might 

 come in connection with a being possessing a free will to choose 

 his own path ; but it is not so with physical evil and the lower 

 animals. For the solution of problems like th ese we must be 

 content to work and wait. 



In the short discussion which followed, 



The President took exception to the statement that nations 

 might lose any arts of civilization which had once been found 

 advantageous. 



' Mr. Walton believed man to have been originally highly 

 endowed, and that he had gradually degenerated in the case of 

 savages. Tnat possibly there had been a pre-Adamite race, which 

 had become extinct before the appearance of the Biblical man. 



Eeferring to the early free-moving condition of many animals 

 which are fixed in their adult stage, he thought that it was an 

 arrangement for ensuring their dispersion. 



Dr. T. Eastes in reference to bacilli, &c., said they seemed to be 

 agents appointed to clear away dead hurtful matter, being always 

 present in putrefaction ; and that wben found in man, as in certain 

 diseases, they had, like some of the creatures mentioned by the 

 lecturer, missed their vocation. 



