in their order of succession in time; and therefore,
if this kind of evidence proves that the later animals
are the descendants of the earlier in any genealogical
sense, it should also prove that the animals living
in one part of the earth at present grow out of animals
living in another part, and that the higher animals
of one class as it exists now are developed out of
the lower ones. The first of these propositions
needs no refutation; and with regard to the second,
all our investigations go to show that every being
born into the world to-day adheres to its individual
law of life, and though it passes through transient
phases of growth that resemble other beings of its
own kind, never pauses at a lower stage of development,
or passes on to a higher condition than the one it
is bound to fill. If, then, this connection is
not a material one, what is it?—for that
such a connection does exist throughout the Animal
Kingdom, as intimate, as continuous, as complex as
any series which the development theorists have ever
contended for, is not to be denied. What can
it be but an intellectual one? These correspondences
are correspondences of thought,—of a thought
that is always the same, whether it is expressed in
the history of the type through all time, or in the
life of the individuals that represent the type at
the present moment, or in the growth of the germ of
every being born into that type to-day. In other
words, the same thought that spans the whole succession
of geological ages controls the structural relations
of all living beings as well as their distribution
over the surface of the earth, and is repeated within
the narrow compass of the smallest egg in which any
being undergoes its growth.
* * * *
*
THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
Deem not the ravished glory thine;
Nor think the flag shall scathless
wave
Whereon thou bidd’st its presage
shine,—
Land of the traitor and the
slave!
God never set that holy sign
In deathless light among His
stars
To make its blazonry divine
A scutcheon for thine impious
wars!
And surely as the Wrong must fail
Before the everlasting Right,
So surely thy device shall pale
And shrivel in the Northern
Light!
Look, where its coming splendors stream!
The red and white athwart
the blue,—
While far above, the unconquered gleam
Of Freedom’s stars is
blazing through!
Hark to the rustle and the sweep,
Like sound of mighty wings
unfurled,
And bearing down the sapphire steep
Heaven’s hosts to help
the imperilled world!
Light in the North! Each bristling
lance
Of steely sheen a promise
bears;
And all the midnight where they glance
A rosy flush of morning wears!
Yon symbol of your Southern sky
Shall surely mean but grief
and loss;
Then tremble, as ye raise on high,
In sacrilege, the Southern
Cross!