w of reason can be assigned for the
belief that variations, alike in nature and the result {432} of the same
general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of
the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man
included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish
it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief "that variation
has been led along certain beneficial lines," like a stream "along definite
and useful lines of irrigation." If we assume that each particular
variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, the plasticity of
organisation, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as
well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a
struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or
survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On
the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and
foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as
insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.

* * * * *

{433}

INDEX.

ABBAS Pacha, a fancier of fantailed pigeons, i. 206.
ABBEY, Mr., on grafting, ii. 147;
on mignonette, ii. 237.
ABBOTT, Mr. Keith, on the Persian tumbler pigeon, i. 150.
ABBREVIATION of the facial bones, i. 73.
ABORTION of organs, ii. 315-318, 397.
ABSORPTION of minority in crossed races, ii. 87-89, 174.
ACCLIMATISATION, ii. 305-315;
of maize, i. 322.
ACERBI, on the fertility of domestic animals in Lapland, ii. 112.
_Achatinella_, ii. 53.
_Achillea millefolium_, bud variation in, i. 408.
_Aconitum napellus_, roots of, innocuous in cold climates, ii. 274.
_Acorus calamus_, sterility of, ii. 170.
ACOSTA, on fowls in South America at its discovery, i. 237.
_Acropera_, number of seeds in, ii. 379.
ADAM, Mr., origin of _Cytisus Adami_, i. 390.
ADAM, W., on consanguineous marriages, ii. 123.
ADAMS, Mr., on hereditary diseases, ii. 7.
ADVANCEMENT in scale of organisation, i. 8.
_Aegilops triticoides_, observations of Fabre and Godron on, i. 313;
increasing fertility of hybrids of, with wheat, ii. 110.
_Aesculus flava_ and _rubicunda_, i. 392.
_Aesculus pavia_, tendency of, to become double, ii. 168.
_Aethusa cynapium_, ii. 337.
AFFINITY, sexual elective, ii. 180.
AFRICA, white bull