28 
other abodes in consequence of the climates having altered. 
Again, weaker animals have been banished or greatly dimi- 
nished in number by stronger ones gaining the mastery over 
them. But all this need not prevent us from believing them 
to have been brought into being, and endowed with their 
various qualities, by an intelligent Creator. iMany persons, 
of whom I profess to be one, consider the latter to be by far 
the more philosophical hypothesis, even apart from the testi- 
mony of Scriptqre. That matter, with all its promises and 
potencies, should either have been eternal or have come into 
existence of itself, or, lastly, have been created by uncon- 
scious agency, — all these suppositions are considered quite 
unphilosophical by many who have fully as good pretensions 
to judge as have their opponents. 
I)r. Eobinson observes that there are combinations to which 
the principle of the Survival of the Fittest cannot apply, as for 
example, waier. In his letter, necessarily brief, he does not 
further explain this. But I think it may be presumed that 
his meaning is, that water, considered as perfectly pure, and 
free from any matter which it may hold in solution, is ever\’- 
where the same, and is never unfitted to its surroundings, nor 
can an}^ one portion of it be more or less able to endure than 
another. Wherever it exists, it is precisely the same chemical 
combination of its two elements. And, moreover, no amount 
of heat or of cold can destroy it. Subjected to any amount 
of cold at or beyond the degree of freezing, it exists as ice ; 
and subjected to any degree of heat at or beyond the boiling 
point, it exists as vapour, its chemical composition being 
always preserved, and its liquid state being always capable of 
being restored by an alteration of the thermometrical con- 
ditions. I am unwilling to trouble my friend. Dr. Robinson, 
for an explanation of this, as he has been already so kind, but 
better chemists than myself can judge whether the conjectural 
explanation above given is the correct one. 
Dr. Eobinson, in the letter above alluded to, gives some 
additional reasons, beyond those stated by me, for holding 
that Joshua^’s miracle was not caused by a cessation of the 
earth^s rotation. Some of those who attribute it to this cause 
remark that a sudden suspension of all terrestrial inertia would 
account for it, and for the things on the earth^s surface re- 
maining steady, without involving the necessity that one 
miracle should be supplemented by another. On this Dr. 
Eobinson remarks that if all terrestrial inertia had been sus- 
pended, the battle could not have been carried on, inasmuch 
as it is owing to inertia that an arrow or dart can reach its 
destination, or that even a blow can take effect. 
