274 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



living bodies, all animal and vegetable forms have been 

 imperceptibly rendered such as we now see them. 

 It follows that species will be constant only in relation 

 to their environments, and cannot be as old as Nature 

 herself. 



" But what are we to say of instinct ? Can we 

 suppose that all the tricks, cunning, artifices, precau- 

 tions, patience, and skill of animals are due to evolution 

 only? Must we not see here the design of an all- 

 powerful Creator ? No one certainly wiU assign limits 

 to the Creator's power, but it is a bold thing to say 

 that he did not choose to work in this way or that way, 

 when his own handiwork declares to us that this is the 

 way he chose. I find proof in Nature — meaning by 

 nature the ensemble of all that is,* but regarding her as 

 herself the effect of an unknown first cause f — that she is 

 the author of organization, life, and even sensation; 

 that she has multiplied and diversified the organs and 

 mental powers of the creatures which she sustains and 

 reproduces ; that she has developed in animals, through 

 the sole instrumentality of sense of need as establishing 

 and directing their habits, all actions and all habits, 

 from the simplest up to those which constitute instinct, 

 industry, and finally reason.^ 



" Against this it is alleged that we have no reason to 

 believe species to have changed within any known era. 

 The skeletons of some Egyptian birds, preserved two or 

 three thousand years ago, differ in no particular from 

 the same kind of creatures at the present day. But this 

 is what we should expect, inasmuch as the position and 



• 'EliU. Zool.,' torn. i. p. 83. t Pages 349-351. % Page 84. 



