He

of Darwin's disciples, in his recent "Lectures to Working Men," explains the "Law of Reproduction," which is the gist of this important theory, in the following manner. tells us that "the Abbé Spallanzani, who made a number of experiments upon snails and salamanders, found that they might be mutilated to an incredible extent; that you might cut off the jaw or the greater part of the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat the experiment several times, perhaps cutting off the same member again and again; and yet each of those types would be reproduced according to the primitive type; nature making no mistake, never putting on a fresh kind of leg or tail, but always tending to repeat and to return to the primitive type." This enables

lutely identical, both in his physical structure and the physiological results of structural organization with the beasts of the field-that his direct ancestor should have been like the howling brute of the Gaboon, and his collateral relation another and more degraded Bornean form-is the great doctrine of which Professor Huxley, in England, is the chief apostle."E. R., April, 1863; p. 546.

us to understand a remarkable fact related by Miss Pardoe, in the "City of the Magyar," where she mentions that in a museum of curiosities in Hungary, belonging to Prince Grassalkovich, two skulls are shown of different sizes, which the parish priest assures the visitors belong to one and the same person. "This," says he of the first, "is the skull of the celebrated rebel Ragotzi ;" and of the second, "That is the skull of the same Ragotzi when he was a boy." Darwin's profound theory of reproduction is the best mode of satisfactorily accounting for this singular phenomenon.*

The "Acta Sanctorum" of the Bollandists

*There is another way of accounting for this phenomenon upon Darwinian principles, and we must leave it to our readers to decide which is the more probable of the two Nordman, a distinguished naturalist, discovered in the gills of the bleak a remarkable double animalcule (Diplozoon paradoxum), having a cross-shaped form with two heads and two tails. This species would, by "natural selection," in the course of ages produce a race of beings who possessed "two skulls" like the rebel Ragotzi, as well as "tails" which were attached to the caudal extremity of the human race up to a certain period in the history of man, as we shall have occasion to prove in the course of this chapter.

record another instance in confirmation of Professor Huxley's opinion that decapitation and loss of life are not necessarily synonymous, as the world in its ignorance hath hitherto supposed them to be. A respectable Irishman, one Beonanus, having had his head cut off in a brawl between two chieftains, during the Middle Ages, his poor wife, finding the headless body of her husband on the battle-field, besought the assistance of her patron saint Ida, who graciously caused the head to fly through the air (the record omits to say whence it came), and adhere to the trunk of Beonanus, who, about an hour after this interesting occurrence, arose from his recumbent posture, saluted the saint, and was subsequently the father of a fine boy by his previously sterile wife, which said boy was appropriately christened Pulcherius, and in due time became Abbot of Liathmore, in King's County, Ireland.*

It must be naturally supposed that the changes in the transmutation of species from

* "Acta Sanctorum." Vol. I., p. 68. Louvain, 1645.

the odoriferous fungus up to the genus homo are somewhat numerous; and it is interesting to know the process by which one change at least has been effected by the metempsychosis of a terrestrial animal into a marine monster. Our Darwin therefore very fairly argues that, as in North America bears are seen swimming on the surface of the water with their mouths open catching insects, there can be no difficulty in supposing these bears may become by "natural selection" more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, until a creature is produced as large as a whale.*

The illustrious Pope Boniface VIII., of whom history records so many strange tales, presents in his own person a very satisfactory proof of descent from the Quadrumana Mammalia, in addition to an intimate connection with marine monsters, for it was generally said of him after his departure that "he came in like a fox, reigned like a lion, and died like

* C "Origin of Species," pp. 183, 184.

a dog." This interesting genealogy gave rise, we presume, to the Italian proverb, Chi bestia va a Roma bestia ritorna.

Another of that distinguished line of Sovereigns which combines the double order of Primates and Fere in a way to which no other royal race has any pretensions, judging from the Apocalyptic description of a certain fair lady in scarlet mounted on a wild beast with seven heads, resembled his great predecessor so far as transmutation goes, only instead of passing from the quadruped to the biped, he appears to have adopted directly the reverse. Platina, the celebrated Roman Catholic historian, relates that "Pope Benedict IX. appeared to one after his death in the form of a bear, and with the tail of an ass; saying, 'because I lived like a beast, without either law or reason, therefore at the command of God and St. Peter, whose seat I have defiled, I resemble now a beast rather than a man.'

It must not, however, be imagined that our Darwin is the actual originator of this charm