bouleversement, this whole bouleversement of the universe. sits? Because Darwin has come to see no more than that the colt is not quite like the sire, the filly not quite like the dam is it for a moment to be supposed (Christianity itself is a small matter!) that this absolute bouleversement once for all is? That Darwin's observations on the effect of crossing pigeons has led to "a revolution in the whole philosophy of Europe "—that is no more than an exiguous makeweight into the bargain! But, was there ever anything in this world so puerile? It is possible, however, that, if neither Mr. Huxley nor Mr. Wallace fairly realised the exact reach of Mr. Darwin's variation, but began, the one with a formed "variety," and the other with already-made "variations from the specific type "-it is still possible that Mr. Darwin, even in his slight and casual everyday difference, has the advantage in a certain way over both. So, there is at least consequence in Mr. Darwin's thinking. For it is evident that, assume the formed variety, or assume the specific variation, the question cannot be avoided, How did they come?-what is the first of either? Now, to that, in accordance with Mr. Darwin's principle of gradation, the answer can only be, Why, the very first imperceptible accident, to be sure! As it is with the tide upon the beach, so is it with difference in the organism: both escape notice till by accumulation they become irresistible.

There is, indeed, consequence in Mr. Darwin's thinking so far; but was there consequence in that whole vast corollary-that flight into the illimitable-from the simple "splitting up" of a stock of horses? Or may we

not regard the action there as a break (for us, namely) into the ground, through which to prove the mineral over the whole field a test in application to the book itself? "He shows," says Mr. Francis Darwin (ii. 15), "how an analogous

divergence takes place under domestication where an originally uniform stock of horses has been split up into race-horses, dray-horses, etc., and then goes on to explain how the same principle applies to natural species."

This is how the same principle applies to natural species:

"But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature? I believe it can and does apply most efficiently (though it was a long time before I saw how) from the simple circumstance that the more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers. We can clearly discern this in the case of animals with simple habits. Take the case of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the number that can be supported in any country has long ago arrived at its full average. If its natural power of increase be allowed to act, it can succeed in increasing (the country not undergoing any change in conditions) only by its varying descendants seizing on places at present occupied by other animals: some of them, for instance, being enabled to feed on new kinds of prey, either dead or alive; some inhabiting new stations, climbing trees, frequenting water, and some, perhaps, becoming less carnivorous. The more diversified in habits and structure the descendants of our carnivorous animals become, the more places they will be able to occupy. What applies to one animal will apply throughout all time to all animals,—that is, if they vary, for otherwise natural selection can effect nothing. So it will be with plants. It has been experimentally proved, that if a plot be sown "-in short, the illustration which we have seen before, pp. 228-230, and p. 269.

If asked how he would transfer the horses from the stable to the jungle, he answers, "I believe !"-I believe it can be done, and efficiently too," though it was a long time before I saw how!" That means what we have already seen (p. 228) when engaged in construing what was meant by divergence. It is the "joy," "whilst in his carriage," "long after he had come to Down;" for it was then, whilst in his carriage, that he suddenly saw how. And that

"how'

that effect

66

-we have the declaration of Mr. Francis Darwin to was how "an analogous divergence takes place

under domestication where an originally uniform stock of horses," etc. In a word, what Mr. Darwin, at least in fancy, saw in his carriage was a stock of horses splitting up, and, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the "joy" transported him to the "carnivorous quadruped" in the jungle. Unlike the horse with his park and his paddock, his stall and his stable, his combs and his currycombs, his beans and his oats, his balls and his mashes, the "carnivorous quadruped" roams at its own will, masterless, without a check. Nevertheless, much to his delight, Mr. Darwin found that this carnivorous quadruped would do quite easily whatever he (Mr. Darwin) had a mind it should do. How frankly supposititious it all is! Mr. Darwin puts the bridle on the neck of his imagination, and actually tells, nothing doubting, of every strange quarter it brings him into. This, probably, is one of the very passages Sedgwick laughed at "till his sides were sore." But what ordinary reader would ever expect that the vast conclusions, in revolution of Europe, Christendom, the Universe, of the greatest Naturalist that was then alive or that had ever lived, were conditioned by such common considerations as those of Mr. Darwin " whilst in his carriage?" 'A country that has long ago arrived at its full average" of carnivorous inhabitants-a country that is not "undergoing any change in conditions "-" a natural power of increase being allowed to act," whatever that may meandescendants that "vary," and that "seize" places actually "at present occupied by other animals "" some of them feeding on new kinds of prey," "either dead or alive "some inhabiting new stations, climbing trees, frequenting water, and some, perhaps, becoming less carnivorous ". "what applies to one animal applying throughout all

time to all animals--that is, if they vary-for otherwise natural selection can do nothing!" It is really only so that an idiosyncratic imagination--the imagination as of an innocent child-wanders, in like passage after like passage, throughout the whole book!

Mr. Francis

If all these stories had been told to him—all these stories of supposed carnivorous quadrupeds, supposed seals, bats, insects, supposed beaks of birds and tusks of elephants, supposed bears and whales-if all these stories had been told to him, cannot we fancy that such a profane genius as the late Dr. Maginn would have been apt to mutter as he turned away from them- Which fully accounts for the milk in the cocker nuts"? Darwin himself told us (see back, pp. 262, 263) how a good many judges (not profane) took them-Sedgwick laughing, as we saw, at "assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved," the grim Carlyle snorting out, as it were, Never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it: wonderful to me as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind,"-one Académicien able to see before him only "a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses, often evidently fallacious," another similarly exclaiming, "What obscure ideas, false, puerile, and out of date!"-Agassiz looking upon all as "a scientific mistake," "untrue in its facts"-a mistake to which, for Sir Wyville Thomson, "the least support was refused," and which, to Sir John Herschel, was only "higgledy-piggledy!" 1

1 It is surprising to me how many excellent intellects are still fascinated by these stories. It is as ripe a scholar as I know that writes thus: "Cats and red clover might seem to have no more logical connection than Tenterden steeple and Goodwin Sands; but Mr. Darwin has shown how the flourishing of red clover depends on the flourishing of cats, who eat the field-mice, who eat the humblebees, who fertilise the red clover." Now here is a series quite as striking as any algebraic one, and what if, in ultimate instance, it be

If all these are to be called, less or more, judges, some of them are already known to us as express experts, true brothers of the craft. Of such experts and brothers, indeed, it is probably Sir Joseph Hooker alone in whom, as he was (to us) at last, there is scarcely a sign of short

not a bit more valid than the nursery rhyme of the dog that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built?

In the first place, unless the story be repeated elsewhere than where I have read it (namely, in the Origin), it is Col. Newman, and not Mr. Darwin, "has shown"-whatever it may be that has been shown: Mr. Darwin only relatively reports. Whatever has been a problem to Mr. Darwin and specially interests him, usually, or at least frequently, reappears in his correspondence. I can find no trace of the red-clover story in the three volumes of the Life and Letters. Even when it occurs to Mr. Darwin to notice the like peculiarity of relation as between the scarlet-runner and the same said humble-bee, at the moment, too, that the whole general subject of fertilising insects is expressly before him (iii. 259 seq.), I cannot find him to mention red clover at all. Of course, it may be a matter rather of failed memory than of modified judgment that is concerned in the omission.

However that may be, it is by no means certain that the "logical connection" in reference is either exclusive or strict; at the same time that we are probably in presence here of one of those occasions on which, as his own words are, he (Mr. Darwin) "extensively used facts observed by others." The sequence red clover, humble-bees, field-mice, and cats really appears at p. 57 of the Origin, but on the authority named, of Col. Newman. Field-mice do destroy the combs and nests of humble-bees; but there are other enemies most destructive to these latter, as ants, wood-lice, earwigs, spiders, caterpillars, birds, particularly the house-lark and the swallow, and, most formidable of all, the wasp and the hornet. Even were there not a single field-mouse in existence, then, still, to the loss of the clover, there might be variously a destruction of humble-bees.

Again, from p. 75 of the Origin, it is quite evident that even with the total destruction of the humble-bees themselves, it is by no means necessary that the red clover should die out along with them. The Ligurian bee, almost already a hive-bee, and freely crossing with it, has about as ready access to the red clover as the humble-bee itself