in

mount it, but, by a long effort of wishing himself small and nimble, he succeeds, after a few ages, climbing the tree, and is transformed into a monkey. The great mental effort which all this change of form and condition required, has now greatly improved the brain and sharpened the intellect, and, by a few more centuries of desire and effort, the monkey is at length converted into a man. Having now got so far, the next step was comparatively easy, that of being an author; and now, a new supply of electricity being sent in upon the brain to quicken its action, that wonder of wonders, that book of books, the history of the Vestiges, makes its appearance. The world is now amazed at the simplicity of the

process by which the climax is

reached, and sit down for an age or two to take

6

breath, and consider what next?'

W. C.

69

LETTER X.

ABSURDITY OF AUTHOR'S HYPOTHESIS.

SIR,-In my last letter, I endeavoured to furnish your readers with a true description of the great law or plan of creation, as laid down by the author of the Vestiges. So far from exaggerating, I withheld by far the greater part of the difficulties of the theory. How not only the external shape of all plants and animals were to be changed, but eyes, mouth, nose, ears, stomach, heart, lungs, bones, veins, brain, and every part of the internal structure of each, to fit it for living in the depths of the ocean, swimming its waters, being supported by its produce; or for creeping, walking, leaping on land, living upon its fruits; breathing the atmosphere, or mounting the air with structure fitted for aërial life, and a thousand other changes, which it is unnecessary to mention, should all take place by ages of wishing, in creatures, the greater part of which are incapable of forming a wish, appears rather mys

F

terious, even although the author represents it to be so simple.

How the immortal spirit entered into man, and those powers he possesses for profound thinking, or sublime contemplation, from electricity, which is the only kind of life to which our author alludes, appears to be rather puzzling to ordinary minds. However, all this is simplicity itself, when compared with what is still required (for it is easy for a man to sit in his study, and cut and carve on creation, as his roving fancy may suggest); the difficulty is to supply the proof. When our author is pressed hard upon this disagreeable subject, and asked to furnish examples of plants or animals undergoing the process of transmutation, he, like the noble race of frogs, to whom he boasts of being so closely allied, has always a muddy pool at hand, in which he can easily hide himself. The long, long, long ages, during which these processes have been advancing, renders it, in his view, extremely unreasonable to expect that, during our short lives, we should be able to observe any of these changes. We shall allow him any latitude he chooses in lengthening out the past history of the earth, for we do not ask to see progress in the transmutations. He may suppose the distance of

the time of creation to be represented by the distance of a star, from which light would take a thousand or a million years to travel, and every inch of which represents a hundred or a thousand years, while human life is but one fleeting hour; still, during that short hour, we expect to see, if his theory be correct, plants and animals in all stages of transition.

The various nations of the human family, as well as various tribes of animals, such as dogs, have, during a course of ages, been undergoing a variety of changes in different parts of the earth; but these are all plain and palpable to the senses, although we cannot trace any distinct progress in the change during our short lives. We expect, therefore, to see the aspiring plant, after ages of effort, at least half converted into a shell fish. We expect to see some of the trees, which, for countless ages, have been waving their proud tops toward heaven, with some part of the wing formed, which, in countless ages more, is to convert them into eagles. We expect to see others with the head and beak of the sovereign bird already formed. In others, the transformation almost complete, and the effort going forward to disentangle the root, that it may take its aërial

flight. Others we expect to see fairly on the wing, but having the tree root as its tail, and which it will take ages still to convert into its proper form. We see the earth, the air, the seas, swarming with animals, which, according to the theory, had been, for unnumbered ages, in a state of transition, and we ask to see them in that state still. All the animals have not reached manhood, and therefore all inferior genera should be rising to some higher grade of being. If our author, for some imagined reason, says that we are now past the transition period, let him show, in the fossil remains of former generations, fishes with birds' wings growing out of them, or with a foot or a toe of some reptile already attached. Let him show either on the surface of the earth, or beneath it, a whale with a bullock's legs, or a crocodile with a cow's horns or ears. Let him show birds with a monkey's tail, or monkeys with birds' wings, or at least with the incipient stumps. Let him take us to the marshes, and show us frogs crawling about with men's heads already formed, or walking upright on human limbs. Or show us birds with sheep's legs and tail unchanged, or sheep with the wings or head of a parrot, or chattering with a parrot's tongue. When