GOLDEN EYES, OR CARROTS—GILPIN. 
402 
you are lost in the immense lapse of time, that it has taken by 
the gradual, slow and all but imperceptible changes, from veget¬ 
able life to animal life of the present day. Years by the tens of 
thousands or hundreds of thousands having swallowed all links 
in the great chain. But when you look at their proofs, we find 
them all drawn from modern life and variations of so short a 
period as ten or fifteen years. The many variations of pigeons 
developed by breeders from one species, the blue rock or common 
pigeon; the infinite variety of dogs of most opposite forms 
from one species, bull-dogs, hounds, collies with no tails, or grey 
hounds with long ones, thus developing in one a bony variation of 
numerous vertebrae, the bones being always considered more typi¬ 
cal than colour, or the soft parts ; the wonderful variations in 
cattle and horses produced by man, are also cited. But there 
can be no analogies between variations of three or four genera¬ 
tions watched over most carefully, continually sliding back if not 
prevented into old forms, (as witness the long horn either of the 
African ox or Texas heifer, in opposition to the modern short 
horn), and one great principle drowning all other principles, 
never going back, always advancing into new forms, resistless, 
unceasing, yet counting thousands of centuries in its work. 
There may be such a grand necessity in creation, but the pigeon 
fancier or the stock-breeder may not prove it. Yet if we can 
advance forms that externally are so much alike, that it is im¬ 
possible to distinguish them, but which, by some fixed inherent 
power, are still keeping up as it were an internal anatomical 
difference, we may at least say that here is one form that does 
not obey the grand principle of evolution, but that commencing 
as two species, still run in courses parallel, so close indeed 
as almost to evade connection. In this sense, these two species 
that I have presented to you this evening, I hope are of greater 
interest. The immense number of facts that are supposed to 
bear favorably on evolution, which have been massed together by 
those brilliant compilers, is perhaps the most splendid record of 
the age. Would they turn their attention to gather all facts 
that oppose it, they would not only be adding equally to our 
stores of science, but only doing what, from their fairness and 
candour, the world is expecting from them. 
