have produced the finest specimen of the genus homo in a veritable John Bull.

It is recorded of Sydney Smith that he used to try the effect of pulpit eloquence, when endeavouring to excite the philanthropic nerves of his people, by assuring them that "John Bull was always famed for the love of his species," until the smallness of the contributions convinced him of the ill success of his appeals, when he contented himself by calmly admitting that he had introduced a letter too much, and that he should have said "his specie" instead.

Very admirable was the reply which our present Ambassador to the United (?) States of America made to a fair dame of haut-ton who sought to expose his pretensions to antiquity, by the question, "Pray, my Lord, are you at all related to the old Lyons family of Norfolk?" "I am afraid not, Madame," calmly replied the ready diplomatist; "I can only claim the honour of being descended from the lions in the den with the Prophet Daniel."

Mais revenons à nos moutons.

When the

author of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" hatched a scheme about fifteen years ago, which created something of a sensation on account of its assumed originality, and in which he contended that the immediate ancestor of Adam was a chimpanzee, and his remote ancestor a maggot, he had scarcely arrived at the half-way house backwards in tracing to its source the real origin of Man. The witty Poet who tuned his lyre in the following strains

"If a man who 'Turnips' cries,

Cries not when his Father dies,
'Tis a proof that he would rather
Have a turnip for his Father”—

approximated nearer the source of Man's origin than he who could trace it no further back than to a maggot, inasmuch as the vegetable world is certainly more ancient than the animal, according to the most recent geological discoveries; and though we may

reasonably suppose that turnips can breed maggots, we very much doubt the reverse.

However true, therefore, the theory that man is only an "improved vegetable," we must carry our thoughts infinitely higher, through those obliterated fossil ages of which Geology knows nothing and Earth has retained no record, before we arrive at the primeval fungus and its grandpapa humus, where, according to the theory of Darwin, the root and origin of that noble biped man is to be found. But in order that we may not fail to do him justice, we adopt the course which King Agrippa pursued towards the Apostle Paul, by allowing him to speak in ipsissimis verbis. "If my theory be true," he observes, in his masterly work "On the Origin of Species," "it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the Silurian age to the present day; and that, during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed

with living creatures. . . . . . I believe that animals have descended from at most four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me a step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But Analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vescicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or, that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oaktree. Therefore, I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed by the Creator."*

Some of the most famous amongst the

*Darwin's "Origin of Species," pp. 307, 484.

ancients appear to have held a different opinion from that of the above Oracle respecting the origin of Man. Thus Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates a quotation from Homer antagonistic to the Darwinian theory, as follows:-"I too, O best of men, have relatives; for to make use of that saying of Homer, 'I am not sprung from an oak, nor from a rock, but from men ;' so that, O Athenians, I likewise have relatives and three sons."* worthies, however, must have lived in very dark times as compared with the present enlightened age; even though " an acknowledged authority" of the present century, the lively Canon of St. Paul's, used to declare "that the weakest and most absurd arguments ever used against religion have been the attempts to compare brutes with men."+

These

Professor Huxley, the most distinguished

xviii.

"The Apology of Socrates," § 3.

"Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy," Lecture

The "Edinburgh Review" remarks upon the mission of this learned Professor as follows:-" That man should be abso