IS 
some slight improvement in the structure of his house, pull down 
the whole fabric and rebuild it from the foundations almost a 
counterpart of what it was before, and do this not once only nor 
twice, but again and again times without number. Yet men are 
not ashamed to attribute to the supremacy of divine wisdom a 
course of conduct which in their own fellows they would recognize 
as extravagantly foolish.” This comparison appears to me to be 
very weak : in the first place, if by improvement is meant an 
altered form, I think we shall find that the alterations are by no 
means slight ; we see not only structural differences, in bone, hair, 
blood, corpuscles, &c., but differences in the periods of gestation, 
even in what might be considered allied forms. Secondly — the 
great Master Builder does pull down and rebuild, not only struc- 
tures which differ but slightly, but also those which are practically 
alike. What is death and decay but a pulling down of the living 
structure 1 I am quite prepared to admit that a human builder 
■would be considered mad, if in order to effect trifling alterations he 
■were not only to utterly destroy the original building, but even to 
break up the building materials into their original elements. There 
exists one grand distinction between the Divine and the human 
architect ; the former destroys or builds up by an effort of Divine 
will, the other can only do so with infinite trouble and expense. 
Professor Flower, a few pages further on, remarks : — “As the ex- 
tinction of species is still going on, and yet the world seems to 
present as great a variety as ever, the introduction of species is 
admitted as possible and probable ; and if the introduction must 
take place by original creation, it has been well put by a distin- 
guished man of science that any morning you might find an 
elephant standing on your lawn just created.” I think if we 
examine this passage we shall find more fun than argument in it. 
The few forms that we know have become extinct, have not been 
replaced by previously unknown species, and when new species 
are discovered there is no evidence that they did not live at as a 
remote a period as any of the longest known living forms. 
The transformation that insects and the lower forms of life un- 
dergo, is an argument frequently used in fovour of evolution ; and 
