of
existence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians,
deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from their
native soils. Lamarck on the contrary, inspired all his plants and
animals--fungi and frogs, and elephants and apes--with the desire of
getting on in the world and improving their limbs by exercise; so the
greyhound grew slim and fleet by running; the giraffe's neck elongated
by reaching up to the branches of the trees on which it browsed, and the
duck acquired web feet by swimming. Others attributed the evolution of
differences to external conditions. The negro became black by exposure
to the tropical sun; the arctic hare received its coat of thick white
fur from the cold climate, and the buffalo and camel their humps of fat
from the sterility of their pastures at certain seasons, and the
consequent need of a reserved store of fat for food for the rest of the
body. Mr. Darwin's doctrine of Natural Selection refuses Lamarck's
notion of any conscious attempt of the plant or animal at improvement;
and equally denies the power of external nature to improve anything,
except by killing off poor specimens, save in that very limited range
where good pastures make fat animals for a season or two. An innate
power of accidental variation to a very small amount, and the slow but
constant adding up of profitable variations during countless
generations, with the killing off of the unimproved breeds by Natural
Selection, is his patent populator and improver. But this theory is too
slow for the nineteenth century, and so neither Huxley, nor Parsons, nor
Mivart, nor even Wallace, accepts the doctrine as Darwin propounds it.
It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyell
proposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see great
geniuses born of commonplace parents; and Huxley supports that opinion,
and Parsons, Owen and Mivart coincide in this inexplicable explanation.
The author of the Vestiges of Creation accounts for improved species
from a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Cope
derive them from quite the contrary process--accelerated development of
gestation. MM. Ferris and Kolliker derive them from parthenogenesis, a
mode of genesis of which our world offers no example whatever.

The origin of man, with all his mental powers and religious aspirations,
is the great difficulty. Mr. Mivart excludes man wholly from the
influence of Natural Selec