108 
DAEWINISM. 
be prepared to meet with several apparently broken links. 
Indeed, there would naturally be such an amazing amount of 
modification between the parent-form and its remote descendant, 
and this would be expressed in so many and such divergent 
ways, that the apparent absence of any connecting links, so far 
from being an objection, is a necessary result of the theory, and 
really rather an argument in its favour than otherwise, because 
it is just what we might reasonably have expected. This, then, 
so far as I understand it, is the meaning of the “ Darwinian 
Theory,” which, I need scarcelj^ say, has been more misunder- 
stood, and, as a natural consequence, more misrepresented, than 
any other of our day, but which is, after all, generaUy and 
increasingly acknowledged to be the best if not the only work- 
able theory extant. As regards the opposite one — that of 
Special Creation — I think that any one w’ho has read attentively 
and thoughtfullj^ the works of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace — 
especially the curious and interesting facts related by the former 
in his chapter on “ Geographical Distribution ” (“ Origin of 
Species”) — will surely be convinced that, judging from all that 
w^e know upon the subject, it has no reasonable basis. The 
Development Theory, as it is called, has also the advantage of 
being capable of legitimate application to vegetable and animal 
life in a wider sense than any other. It would seem, indeed, as 
if by it we had touched the very w^arp and w^oof of organic life, 
and were, at length, in a fair w^ ay to get some faint glimpses of 
the great central ruling principle, intertwined as it is in the 
labyrinth of being, and branching out in many different w/ays. 
As one instance of this capacity for broad application, I 
think that of what are called Insectivorous Plants ” presents 
itself. It is well known that these have generally but slight 
and insignificant roots, depending, as they do, chiefly upon 
insects for subsistence, though in a different and perhaps more 
literal w’ay to that w^hich we have been used to observe in the 
