re, having special reference to this
topic,--the origin of species. Certain observations made in the course
of his explorations in South America led him to the convictions which
subsequent study only strengthened; and, after having spent years in the
collection of facts bearing upon the subject, he gave his theory to the
world in the volume mentioned, which was merely a digest of the facts.
It is perhaps needless to say, that Charles Darwin is a naturalist of
the highest rank; that he stands among the foremost men of the day as a
clear-minded, trustworthy, accurate, profound thinker.

The Darwinian theory is erected on the primary foundation of a natural
law acting through all time,--a persistent force which is applied to all
creation, immutable, unceasing, eternal; which determined the
revolutions of the igneous vapor out of which worlds were first evolved;
which determines now the color and shape of a rose-bud, the fall of the
summer leaves, the course of a rippling brook, the sparkle of a diamond;
which gives light to the sun and beauty to a woman's eye. It rejects
utterly the idea of special creation, and maintains that the globe, as
it exists to-day with all its myriad inhabitants, is only one phase of
that primeval vapor which by the force of that law has reached its
present state. As a little microscopic egg becomes in time a full-grown,
living, breathing, loving animal by the operation of natural laws which
we term growth, so has the universe, with its denizens, become what it
is by the workings of Natural Law.

The precise process by which sentient existence first became evolved
from inorganic matter seems to be beyond the scrutiny of man. It is so
far without the scope of his experience, his speculation even, that it
is futile to attempt to surmise it; although certain interesting
phenomena have attended the experiments of naturalists, especially those
of Professor Jeffries Wyman. Darwin takes the subject up at the
appearance of animal life, and seeks to work out the causes of the
present variation among animals, and to detect the _modus operandi_ by
which the law of evolution has produced the multiform changes now
apparent. "Natural Selection" is his password into the great workshop of
Nature. The three great agencies at work there are the tendency of all
animals to transmit their peculiarities to their offspring, the tendency
of all animals to vary from their ancestors under varying influences
around them,