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hare, and there would have been no tendency to generate a 
horn. Such a disposition must have required the concurrence 
of multitudes of favourable circumstances for its formation, as 
well as that of indefinite eons of time. 
IV. The act of butting has a tendency to harden the skull ; 
this we know to be a fact. Still, a philosophy whose object is 
not theory, but truth, cannot help inquiring. Whence came 
this tendency ? It might have been one in an opposite 
direction. 
V. We are next invited to assume that repeated acts of butting 
have not only hardened the skull, but developed a horny accretion. 
The remarks of our author might lead the reader to believe that 
all this could have been effected in a single generation of bull life. 
But it is quite evident that it could only have been the result 
of the struggles of protracted generations, who succeeded in 
transmitting to their descendants a gradually increasing horny 
appendage. If it were not so, bull life in those primeval ages 
must have been protracted to a period compared with which the 
age of Methuselah must have been as nothing. Let it be 
observed also, that the concurrence of everyone of these favour- 
able conditions must have been continually repeating themselves. 
VI. The bulls, says our author, who have succeeded in 
developing these horny appendages will have the best chance 
of preserving their existence. Still this is a chance only, but 
not a certainty, for many other contingencies might have 
destroyed them. Deaths from disease were probably not 
unknown in primeval times, and against this the possession of 
an incipient horn would have been no prevention. 
VII. We are next asked to assume that these bulls go on 
continually fighting until all the less-equipped ones are torn in 
pieces, in order that an individual with incipient horns may 
become the progenitor of a race. This philosophy, however, is 
utterly silent as to the number of years and of favourable con- 
tingencies it would have taken to bring about this result. It 
simply brandishes its magic wand, and the unhorned oxen 
disappear. . . 
VIII. It is necessary that the bull with incipient horns 
should procreate descendants similarly equipped. It is un- 
doubtedly in accordance with natural facts that he should do so. 
Still this philosophy is bound to tell us how came this law into 
existence, for it has the appearance of being a result of that 
intelligence, the existence of which it denies.. 
IX. Our incipient horn has yet to grow into a longer one, 
and then into a longer one, until it attains its full length. Tor 
this purpose, these processes of fightings and buttings, and 
