1883.] 
Flank Attacks on Evolution. 
2 55 
coprophagous Lamellicorns, and other groups which it would 
be equally needless and tedious to mention. We have 
then the parasitic groups, entozoic and epizoic, to be pro- 
vided for. 
In like manner the refuse of the vegetable world — wood, 
leaves, &c., in various states of decay, furnishes a pabulum 
for a host of beetles, myriapods, certain lepidopterous larvae, 
for the land-snaiis, and even for the earth-worms, whose 
diet consists largely of humus. It may well be asked how, 
on the mechanical creation theory, could all the above enu- 
merated groups find support save on the assumption of a 
perfedt complication of miracles ? We have heard it sug- 
gested, by an adherent of “ brachy-chronology,” that the 
fossils, animal and vegetable, which we discover in the 
earth’s crust are not the remains of extindt species, but 
mere simulacra “for man’s illusion given.” Are we, in the 
same spirit, to assume that this earth was created ready 
stocked with carrion and excrement, with decayed wood and 
withered leaves ? 
How beautifully simple, on the other hand, is the Evolu- 
tionist view which supposes that, as any kind of refuse 
matter became abundant, some animal form, impelled by the 
struggle for existence, adopted such refuse, first as a portion 
of its diet, and then as the whole, its habits and its strudture 
becoming modified accordingly. On the mechanical-creation 
hypothesis the eater would in many cases precede its food, 
whilst on the Evolutionist hypothesis the food would precede 
the eater, which would take advantage of the new opening. 
Both the writers whose views we have been discussing 
approach Evolutionism from an ecclesiastical point of view, 
and both seem to regard it as hostile to and irreconcilable 
with Christianity. Says Mr. Howard, in the opening passage 
of his pamphlet, “ It has been supposed that the notion of 
Deity, or of an omnipotent creative and sustaining power, 
may be thus removed to a greater distance from the human 
mind ; and the unwelcome thought of responsibility to a 
higher tribunal than those of earth, and of subjection 
to an eternal judgment abolished.” Here is a distindt, a 
grave, and we hesitate not to say an utterly baseless, impu- 
tation. Mr. Howard here insinuates, if he does not diredtly 
assert, that the motives of Darwin and of his coadjutors 
and disciples have not been scientific, or at leasj not purely 7 
so, but that they have been actuated by other considerations 
— by a hostility to revealed religion. Now there is no evi- 
dence whatever in support of this charge. The true man of 
Science does not go forth in search of the extra-scientific 
