his “thousands and thousands of generations,” to the existence of his “common parent, otherwise perhaps very differently constructed, but striped like a zebra.”—­(p. 67.) “How inexplicable,” he exclaims, “on the theory of creation, is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulder and legs of several species of the horse genus and in their hybrids!”—­(p. 473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species was created with a tendency “like this, is to make the works of God a mere mockery and deception”; and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is gone when he refers the stripes to his hypothetical thousands on thousands of years removed progenitor.  But how is his difficulty really affected? for why is the striping of one species a less real difficulty than the striping of many?

Another instance of this mode of dealing with his subject, to which we must call the attention of our readers, because it too often recurs, is contained in the following question:—­

Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs, or seed, or as full grown? and, in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother’s womb?—­p. 483.

The difficulty here glanced at is extreme, but it is one for the solution of which the transmutation-theory gives no clue.  It is inherent in the idea of the creation of beings, which are to reproduce their like by natural succession; for, in such a world, place the first beginning where you will, that beginning must contain the apparent history of a past, which existed only in the mind of the Creator.  If, with Mr. Darwin, to escape the difficulty of supposing the first man at his creation to possess in that framework of his body “false marks of nourishment from his mother’s womb,” with Mr. Darwin you consider him to have been an improved ape, you only carry the difficulty up from the first man to the first ape; if, with Mr. Darwin, in violation of all observation, you break the barrier between the classes of vegetable and animal life, and suppose every animal to be an “improved” vegetable, you do but carry your difficulty with you into the vegetable world; for, how could there be seeds if there had been no plants to seed them? and if you carry up your thoughts through the vista of the Darwinian eternity up to the primaeval fungus, still the primaeval fungus must have had a humus, from which to draw into its venerable vessels the nourishment of its archetypal existence, and that humus must itself be a “false mark” of a pre-existing vegetation.

We have dwelt a little upon this, because it is by such seeming solutions of difficulties as that which this passage supplies that the transmutationist endeavours to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation.