cies 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.

There are no parts of Mr. Darwin's ingenious book in which he gives the
reins more completely to his fancy than where he deals with the
improvement of instinct by his principle of natural selection. We need
but instance his assumption, without a fact on which to build it, that
the marvellous skill of the honey-bee in constructing its cells is thus
obtained, and the slave-making habits