462 MODERN SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION : 
that modern investigation has given us no new light. 
Among those who have accepted the theory of a special 
creation, and have differed only in regard to the number 
of species and their places of origin or centres of creation, 
there has been such a diversity of opinion that all confi- 
dence in their reality and value of the bases of their rea- 
soning has been lost. Among the advocates of a multi- 
plicity of species and diversity of origin we have from 
Blumenbach to Agassiz almost every number between 
fifteen and three as that of distinct species of the human 
race, scarcely any two writers advocating the same num- 
er. We may, therefore, very fairly infer that the facts 
upon which their conclusions are founded, are not of a 
very clear and unmistakable character. 
The subject of the origin of the human race brings us 
into the domain of zodlogy, and opens the wide question 
of the origin of species, which, of late years, has been 
shaking the moral and intellectual world as by an earth- 
guake.: While the various writers upon the origin of 
the human race were gathering with so much industry, 
and reporting with so much eloquence the proots of a 
diversity of origin, the Darwinian hypothesis comes in 
and refers, not only all the human family, but all classes 
of animals and plants, to an initial point in a nucleated 
cell. 
It would be impossible for any one to discuss, in a fair 
and intelligent manner, the great question of the origin 
of species, in anything less than a bulky volume. The 
merest mention is, therefore, all we can give to it at the 
present time. Although the appearance of. Darwin’s 
_ book on the Origin of Species communicated a distinct 
_ shock to the prevalent creeds, both religious and scien- 
—s ibe hypothesis which it suggests, though now for 
