l get them to sign a joint memorial to
the effect that our present palaeontological evidence proves that birds
appeared before the "land-population" of terrestrial reptiles, I shall
think it my duty to reconsider my position--but not till then.

It will be observed that I have cautiously used the word "appears" in
referring to what seems to me to be absence of any real answer to my
criticisms in Mr. Gladstone's reply. For I must honestly confess that,
notwithstanding long and painful strivings after clear insight, I am
still uncertain whether Mr. Gladstone's "Defence" means that the
great "plea for a revelation from God" is to be left to perish in the
dialectic desert; or whether it is to be withdrawn under the protection
of such skirmishers as are available for covering retreat.

In particular, the remarkable disquisition which covers pages 11 to
14 of Mr. Gladstone's last contribution has greatly exercised my mind.
Socrates is reported to have said of the works of Heraclitus that he who
attempted to comprehend them should be a "Delian swimmer," but that, for
his part, what he could understand was so good that he was disposed
to believe in the excellence of that which he found unintelligible. In
endeavouring to make myself master of Mr. Gladstone's meaning in these
pages, I have often been overcome by a feeling analogous to that
of Socrates, but not quite the same. That which I do understand has
appeared to me so very much the reverse of good, that I have sometimes
permitted myself to doubt the value of that which I do not understand.

In this part of Mr. Gladstone's reply, in fact, I find nothing of which
the bearing upon my arguments is clear to me, except that which relates
to the question whether reptiles, so far as they are represented by
tortoises and the great majority of lizards and snakes, which are land
animals, are creeping things in the sense of the pentateuchal writer or
not.

I have every respect for the singer of the Song of the Three Children
(whoever he may have been); I desire to cast no shadow of doubt upon,
but, on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of Mr. Gladstone's
information as to the considerations which "affected the method of
the Mosaic writer"; nor do I venture to doubt that the inconvenient
intrusion of these contemptible reptiles--"a family fallen from
greatness" (p. 14), a miserable decayed aristocracy reduced to mere
"skulkers about the earth" (_ibid._)--in consequence, apparentl