d extract of
the reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own
interpretation of these passages? If he insists that green woodpeckers
were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable
to capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were
specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more
liable to be caught? And would an explanation of the mode in which
those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him
that the color was undesigned?

As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist
as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect
(_quoad_ the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal
fatally to injure or to disembowel itself? Either way it seems to us
that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs _hari-kari_.

The "Examiner" adds:--"We should in like manner object to the word
_favorable_, as implying that some species are placed by the Creator
under _unfavorable_ circumstances, at least under such as might be
advantageously modified." But are not many individuals and some races
of men placed by the Creator "under unfavorable circumstances, at
least under such as might be advantageously modified"? Surely these
reviewers must be living in an ideal world, surrounded by "the
faultless monsters which _our_ world ne'er saw," in some elysium where
imperfection and distress were never heard of! Such arguments resemble
some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book
responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of
human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing,
though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be
confronted upon any theory.

The "North American" reviewer also has a world of his own,--just such
a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise,--that is,
full of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the
"absolute invariableness of instinct"; an absolute want of
intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct
by the brute animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for
them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion
of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from
man on the other: most convenient views for argumentative purposes,
but we suppose not borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the