REVIEWS. 
465 
really shells, and bones, and plants, or whether they wore plastic forms 
inodellcd in the dark recesses of the ground. Even now a-days some literary 
adventurers aiul craek-brained sages — aud we arc sorry to say, some men, too, 
of better note but uiistakeu views— now and then attempt to palm off this 
long ago exploded wliiin under a specious guise upon an intelligent world. 
The danger from such productions is small, aud few imlccd of those worth caring 
for would think a fossil bone or shell aught else than the treasured fragment 
of some ancient living being. * 
More dangerous, however, are the wilful pervcrtors who* argue with a 
specious show of knowledge; and such detractors Darwiu's theory, like every 
other, is sure to bring forward against itself. " Species have been eoustant," 
says oue, " ever since they first existed ; change the conditions, and the old 
species would disappear. New species would come in and flourish. But how? 
by what causation ? By creation. What is meant by creation ? The opera- 
tion of a power quite beyond the power of a pigeou-faucier, a cross-breeder, or 
a hybridizer, in which one can believe by the legitimate conclusion of sound 
reason drawn from the laws and harmonics of nature, aud, believing, can have 
no difficulty in the repetition of new species." 
Dickens, in one of his novels, very shrewdly remarks that the advice given to 
street-boys about to fight " to go in and win" is very excellent if they only 
knew how to follow it ; and when one naturally asks how new species which 
geology shows us appearing from time to time first began, the answer, by crea- 
tion is as easy to give and about as useless as the advice offered to the street- 
boys. It is, after all, a mere assertion, an evasion of the question, a cloak for 
ignorance. We see different races from time to time leaving theii- relies en- 
tombed in the solid rocks of the earth, we see the remains, however, only of 
the perished race ; we have no proof, no trace, no evidence whatever in those 
great entombments of the origin or first appearance of the progenitors of those 
races. Those races might have sprung from single pairs, or the primitive indi- 
viduals might have been created in hundreds. Pew, we think, would incline to 
the opinion of the dii-ect creation of hundreds of the like animals or plants at 
one time ; but if, on the other hand, we incline to the direct creation of a single 
pau', we must admit that that pair must have been created ages before its race 
could be useful or necessary on the face of the earth ; must have been created 
in fact in advance of those changes of physical conditions of our planet, which 
all admit to have been brought about in the lapse of time by natural operations, 
in order to provide for the necessary propagation of their descendants in suffi- 
cient numbers at the period when they should usefully abound. We should 
incline to think that a theory which proposed to view the development of the 
required races or species as eoncun-eut with the physical changes rendering 
necessary their presence, — and as consequently necessarily developed by natural 
laws, like we see everywhere else around us so wisely and immutably pre- 
ordained, apparently from the beginning of aU things, by the Almighty Designer, 
—would be preferable to the idea of direct creations, and affording a more 
reasonable reply than the mere assertions of the miraculous agency with which 
our query is so commonly met. 
But "the assumption of the direct creation of species is an hypothesis," says 
another, " which does not suspend or interrupt any established law of nature. 
It does not suppose the introduction of new phenomena unaccounted for by 
the operation of any known law ; and it appears to be a power above established 
laws, and yet acting in conformity with them." It may be due to the astute- 
ness of our intellect, but we cannot see how a power can be above and not be 
necessarily antagonistic to established laws, ana consequently how it can be 
possible for such a power to be in conformity with such established laws. 
"The pretended physic and philosophy of modern days," says a third, 
VOL. III. 3 N 
