12 FEATHERS 



One advantage a bird possesses over the bat or the 

 dragon-fly, is that if the membrane of the wing of either 

 the beast or the insect is torn or destroyed, it cannot 

 be repaired ; whereas if a bird loses its flight feathers 

 through accident of weather or combat, it has only to 

 wait tiU the next moult to receive a brand new outfit. 



Now I don't know what inference my readers may 

 draw from the contemplation of the structure I have 

 endeavoured to describe — whether they feel constrained 

 to recognise it as the outcome of design, the result of 

 forces working in accordance with laws established by 

 a Supreme Power — or whether they share the opinion 

 of Harriet Martineau and her coUaborateur Henry 

 Atkinson, who scoffed at all believers in design as 

 ' teleologists ' and announced that ' the laws of matter 

 are fundamental and sufficient in themselves. To call 

 Nature's doings and the fitness and form of things 

 design is absurd.' My own limited apprehension is 

 unable to visualise any 'laws' without a lawgiver. 

 While my poor intelligence receives no help from 

 dogma defining with analytical precision the nature, 

 attributes, and purpose of the lawgiver, the Athan- 

 asian Creed itself exacts less from the understanding 

 than the dismal Martineau doctrine that 'Philosophy 

 finds no God in nature ; no personal being or creator, 

 nor sees the want of any.' 



' Great God 1 I 'd rather be 

 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 

 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 

 Have sight of Proteus rising from the lea, 

 Or hear old Triton blow his weathered horn.' 



