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Show 92 DARWINIAN A. th gh pride may. The next suggests a closer asso-ciaotuio n of our ancestors of the ol de n ti.m e. WI• th" our poor relations" of the quadrumanous family than w_e l.k to acknowledO'e. Fortunately, however-even If I e o l . h h. must account foi· him scien:tifica ly-man w1t 1s :o feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Intermediate links between the Bimana and the Quadru-ana are lacking altogether; so that, put the gene~ 0 y of the brutes upon what footing you will, the fou~-handed races will not serve for our forerunners -at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great-toes, in~tead of thumbs, up?n his nether extremities; or unt1l some lucky geolog1st turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so ~usy "napping the chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the. time of the drift, very many ages ago-before the British Channel existed, says Lyell 1 -and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their great-toes· in the divergent and tht+mblike fashion. That would be evidence indeed: but, until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must needs believe· in th~ separate and special creation o_f man, however it may have been with the lower ammals and with plants. No doubt the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hy~othesis strongly suggest the evolution of 1 Vide "Proceedings of the British Association for the Advance· ment of Science," 1859, and London .A.thenceum, passim. ~t ~ppears to be conceded that these " celts" or stone knives are arti:fiCla~ pr~- ductions, and apparently of the age of th e mamm oth , the fossil rhi-noceros, etc. NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 93 the human no less than the lower animal races out of some simple primordial animal-that all are equally "lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." But, as the author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and accepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form or forms of being which included potentially all that have since existed and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems as great likelihood that one special origination should be followed by another upon fitting occasion (such as the introduction of man), as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ from each other only in some details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements he adds to the machine he possesses; he adapts a new rig or a new rudder to an old boat : this answers to Variation. " Like begets like," being the great rule in N atnre, if boats could engender, the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon ; and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft-the very diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing th~ 5 . . |