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thesis account for the fact that in this country alone more than 250 species of 
wild bees have never built combs of such mathematical perfection ? Why 
have the makers of simpler cells not succumbed to the hive-bee in the 
dreadful struggle for existence, which Mr. Darwin would elevate to the 
place of that wisdom which has impressed the hive-bee- with its marvellous 
instinct, as it has placed stars and planets under the laws which regulate 
their orbits ?— But why have these 250 species not been consigned to the 
records of past geological ages ? Mr. Darwin brings his system to the test 
of two crucial instances— the first the formation of complex structures ; the 
second the production of instincts evidencing the same marks of design, as such 
organs as the eye and ear. He does not confine himself to the eye among 
animal structures. The fish is the parent of the mammal, the lung but the 
improvement of a swimming-bladder. Thus he would eliminate all evidence 
of design, not only from the structure, but also from the guiding instincts of 
the animal and vegetable world. Tested by these two instances, I feel that 
my incredulity of Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis becomes strengthened into a con- 
viction, not only of its improbability, but its absolute impossibility. The 
hypothesis that the Creator made the whole animate world spring from many 
centres of being ; that he endowed each parent form with the power of 
propagating its like ; that he furnished each of these with all fitting instincts 
for their preservation ; that he endowed the living structures not only 
with the principle of life, but with the power of repairing and reproducing 
these structures in all their perfection of wisdom and design, — this surely 
offends no philosophical or scientific canon. Surely it cannot be more 
philosophical to limit the power of the Creator in giving life, to confine that 
power to one solitary instance, or at most to ten or twelve. My hypothesis 
concedes to the Divine Creator the power of creating as many forms as He 
saw fit in His Divine wisdom to create. It accounts for the marvellous 
uniformity of type and design in the midst of as marvellous a degree of 
variation and adaptability, by the supposition that this is an evidence of one 
Maker, one origin. There is another consideration which, to my mind, 
manifests most clearly the incredibility of Darwinism as a scientific hypo- 
thesis. We are told by Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Warington has repeated the 
same thing, that man can exercise a law of natural selection when improving 
the breeds of domestic animals ; that improvements so produced by man’s 
interference are transmissible from one generation to another. And we are 
told, if man can exercise this power to a certain extent, that Nature can do 
the same if we allow but time enough for her operations ; the term Nature 
being used, not as synonymous with the directing power of the- Divine 
mind, but being simply the law of natural selection exercised by the fact of 
the weaker and less-endowed animals being destroyed in the battle of life 
or struggle for existence. Mr. Warington tells me that I am not at liberty 
to assume that there is any limitation to this law of variation and transmis- 
sion of changes of structure ; — that if I do so, I am begging the whole question 
which is in dispute. Now, while I concede that man can produce certain 
variations, I find it is a stern law of Nature that he can only do so within 
