170 ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION. 



this order, yet the first is nearly as aquatic, as the coot, and 

 the second is nearly as terrestrial as the quail or partridge. 

 In such cases, and many others could be given, habits have 

 changed without a corresponding change of structure. The 

 webbed feet of the upland goose may be said to have be- 

 come almost rudimentary in function, though not in struc- 

 ture. In the frigate-bird, the deeply scooped membrane 

 between the toes shows that structure has begun to change. 

 He who believes in separute and innumerable acts of 

 creation may say, that in these cases it has pleased the 

 Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of one 

 belonging to another type; but this seems to me only re- 

 stating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in 

 the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural 

 selection, will acknowledge that every organic being is con- 

 stantly endeavoring to increase in numbers; and that if 

 any one being varies ever so little, either in habits or struc- 

 ture, and thus gains an advantage over some other inhab- 

 itant of the same country, it will seize on the place of that 

 inhabitant, however diiferent that may be from its own 

 place. Hence it will cause him no surjarise that there should 

 be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the 

 dry land and rarely alighting on the water, that there 

 should be long-toed cornci-akes, living in meadows instead 

 of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where 

 hardly a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes 

 and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the habits of 

 auks. 



ORGAN'S OF EXTREME PERFECTION: AND COMPLICATION. 



To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contri- 

 vances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for 

 admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction 

 of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been 

 formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, 

 absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that 

 the sun stood still and the world turned round, the com- 

 mon sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; bat the 

 old saymg of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher 

 knows, can not be trusted in science. Eeason tells me, 

 that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect 



