or

which end in accumulating generic dis- to the crustacea. Creatures so widely tinction, that anyone who will thoroughly apart in construction, that at one time and honestly study all the available forms, they were placed not only in different fossil and recent, will find it far more dif- genera but in different orders, are now ficult to believe them the result of a great known to be the same individual animal many separate acts of creation than to in the changeful guises or disguises of believe them the members of a single its personal development. The Zoea, the family, derived from a common ancestor. Megalopa, the Monas Carcinus, There is a curious organ, known as the Shore-crab, are but the baby, the child, madreporiform tubercle, and connected the adult forms of a single animal. This with what is called the water-vascular cir- is most instructive in regard to the abculation, existing alike in the Ophiuridæ, rupt metamorphoses from the caterpillar the Asteriada, and the Echinidæ. Its to the pupa, from the pupa to the imago position is central in the first; lateral on stages in the Lepidoptera. It has seemed the dorsal surface in the second, being extremely puzzling to reconcile with the almost marginal in Luidia; and dorsally theory of evolution the transition of a sub-central in the third of these classes. creeping caterpillar into an inert chrysalis, The sub-kingdom of the Arthropoda, to and of the chrysalis into a bright-winged which we shall next turn our attention, butterfly, all within the limits of a single embraces within its limits the crab and lifetime. The puzzle would be equally the butterfly. This must seem a most great with the three forms of Monas Carparadoxical caprice in classification, un- cinus, were the transitions equally abrupt. less some intermediate form presents it- But they are not so. The process of develself to the mind. The sub-kingdom in opment has there been proved by Mr. question is, in fact, divided into four Spence Bate to be perfectly gradual. In classes Insecta, Myriopoda, Arachnida, the Lepidoptera the process is no longer Crustacea. And when, in addition to the gradual, no doubt for the simple reason crab and the butterfly, we remark that it that many of the intermediate stages have includes the caterpillar, the centipede, been suppressed, or repressed, and lost and the spider, a possibility gradually to observation. That such suppression dawns upon the mind, that among the may take place is clearly indicated by the countless forms which nature provides, example of the West Indian Gecarcinus, here also some may be found to link to- or land-crab, which brings forth its young gether the unlike, to supply the requisite in the likeness of the adult form without fine gradations, to prove in a sense more the intervention of metaphoric stages. literal than the poet intended, that "one Fritz Müller has pointed out the considtouch of nature makes the whole world erable advantage which this peculiarity kin." We can easily accept the butterfly would give to the species possessing it in and the spider as belonging to the same the struggle for existence. And probasub-kingdom. The spider and the spider- bly the advocates of special creations will crab are not so unlike when placed to- regard it as a beautiful adaptation of the gether as to revolt our notions of congru- land-crabs to the conditions of crab-life ity in grouping. As a matter of fact, the upon land. Before these advocates it is nervous system of the crustacea, we are necessary to lay another beautiful adapttold, resembles in its general principles ation of land-crabs to the conditions of that of the insects. The visual organ in continental existence. "Once in the year the crustacea is essentially similar to that they migrate in great crowds to the sea, of insects. In the crustacea, as in in- in order to deposit their eggs, and aftersects, there is a marked division of the wards return much exhausted towards body into three regions, the head, the their dwelling-places, which are reached thorax, the abdomen. The throwing off only by a few." On the principles of of the old integument, and its replace- natural selection we can understand the ment by a new one during the growth of gradual migration of crabs, which varied the animal, takes place in all the crusta- so as to be capable of it, farther and farcea, says Mr. Bell, as necessarily and as ther inland. On the same principles we constantly as in insects during their larva can understand the preservation of an incondition.* The very peculiarity of un- stinct in these creatures of depositing dergoing metamorphoses, which was once their eggs in the sea-waves or on the thought most decisively to set apart the sea-shore, though that instinct proved insect tribe, is now known to belong also

*British Crustacea, p. xxxiii.

Bell, British Stalk-eyed Crustacea, p. liv.
↑ Fritz Müller, Facts for Darwin, p. 55-
Troschel, quoted by Fritz Müller, p. 48, note.

66

assome cases

subsequently fatal to the parents them- | Stalk-eyed. The Stalk-eyed Prawn has selves. The capacity for land-life being been traced through its several stages of a late acquisition, and therefore not at development-the Naupius, Zoea Mysis, the outset inherited by their offspring in forms till it becomes a perfect Palæthe earliest stages, the eggs if deposited mon. The two first of these forms coron dry land would have perished and the respond with those of the lower Crusrace become extinct. Accordingly only tacea, and are sessile-eyed, thus remarkthose species of land-crabs would be pre-ably binding together the two great diserved in which the mothers chose, at visions of the class. Mr. Bell, in the Inwhatever expense to their own lives, to troduction to his History of the British be delivered of their offspring at the sea- stalk-eyed Crustacea, observes that "the side. This result may be beautiful or variations which occur in every organ and ugly as you please to regard it; it can at function, in the different groups belongleast be seen to be natural. Some minds ing to the Crustacean type, are so considtake a different view. They think it more erable as to render it almost impossible consonant to piety and religion to believe to include them all within one common that by an arrangement of special crea- and well-defined expression." He speaks tion, by the excellent design of supreme of the typical characters as being wisdom, the parents were fitted only for tonishingly modified," in life, upon dry land, the children only for "totally changed," "in others, absolutely life in sea-water; that the land-crabs of lost." In other words, while still apparalmost every species were specially cre- ently a believer in the theory of typical ated with an instinct destructive to their creations, he confesses the fallaciousness own lives. of that theory. For how can creatures be created according to a type with the typical characters absolutely lost? But none of the modifications of the twenty-one segments with their appendages which appertain to the Crustacea, be it into eye-stalks or foot-jaws, into ambulatory feet or natatory, be it by soldering and expansion of the plates into a broad carapace, or dwindling of appendages into rudimentary dots upon the tail none of these changes are in any way alien to the principles of natural selection based on variation. The single eye of the Nauplius, the two sessile eyes of the Zoea, the two stalked eyes of the fullgrown Prawn, accord but ill with typical formation. They accord perfectly well with the theory of development; as also does the circumstance that in the young animal the number of facets in the eye is fewer than in the adult state. Thus, according to Spence Bate, "in the genus Gammarus, the number of lenses in the young is first eight or ten, whilst in the adult they number from forty to fifty." There are men of science who put forward particular organizations, and captiously enquire how the incipient stages of such structures could have been of any use, so as to be preserved by natural selection. This is what Mr. Mivart has done in reference to the whalebone of the whale's mouth. Surely this is nothing but an appeal to ignorance. To an animal such as the whale is now, very likely rudimentary whalebone would be of

We have spoken of land-crabs and shore-crabs; there are also river-crabs and deep-sea crabs. Between the crabs that are constantly in the water, and crabs that are constantly on the land, there are those which are amphibious. Breathing in the air and breathing in the water are two different things. It is only necessary to hold one's head in a bucket of water for a minute and a half to prove this experimentally. This difference alone might seem a satisfactory refutation of the theory of man's origin from a marine animal. But the crab refutes the refutation. And the researches of Fritz Müller have shown by what very simple stages the transition from aquatic to aërial respiration may be effected. Among the Grapsoidæ he observed that the animal opened its bronchial cavity in front or behind, according as it had to breathe water or air. In many of the Crustacea there are contrivances by which the animal continues, when upon land, to breathe the water which it retains in its own body; and it seems probable that, in some of the terrestrial Isopoda, the same contrivances which protect the branchiæ, or water-breathing apparatus, and prevent the too rapid escape of moisture, have, beyond this, a pulmonary function- that is, subserve the purpose of aërial respiration.†

There are two main divisions of the Crustacea, the Sessile-eyed and the

Fritz Müller, Facts for Darwin, p. 31.

↑ British Sessile-eyed Crustacea, Int. p. xxxvii. Spence Bate, and J. Ó. Westwood.

Sessile-eyed Crustacea. Introduction, p. viii.

little service. But who told Mr. Mivart es most closely to the sub-kingdom of the that the whale had acquired all the condi- vertebrata, although in the present state tions of its present organization before of knowledge there is still a large interval the whalebone began to sprout? The between them. Even this large interval long fibrous plates which depend from the is partially bridged over by the Amphiupper jaw of the Greenland whale serve oxus lanceolatus, or Lancelet, the single it, for securing its food, in place of teeth. species which represents the PharyngoDoubtless, prior to the development of branchial order of fishes. The Lancelet, the whalebone, the ancestral form had a little worm-like, semi-transparent fish, teeth, for the rudiments are still to be two inches in length when full grown, has found in both jaws of the young ones. pulsating vessels instead of a saccular All other species possess teeth either in heart, and is without either cranium or one or both jaws, and in these only short brain strictly so called. In the developfringes of whalebone are found. If the ment of this the lowest of the vertebrates short fringes are useless, why, O teleolo- correspondences have been noticed with gists are they there? If they are not the development of certain Ascidians. useless, why should they not have been And here it may be remarked that bepreserved by natural selection? Granted tween a mollusk without a shell and a that the incipient structure may not have fish without bones there may have been been a short fringe, but merely a minute any number of transitional forms, not one gummy exudation on the roof of the of which would in the ordinary course of mouth, is it impossible to conceive any events have left a vestige in fossil records. use and advantage for so slight a variation? Far from it. In a minor degree it would subserve the very purpose fulfilled by the long sieve-like structure in the skull of the Greenland whale - namely, the detention of little Pteropods and Meduse, on which the huge monster delicately feeds.*

Passing from the lowest to the highest class of fishes, we come to the Dipnoi or double breathers, fitted both for aquatic and aërial respiration. These mud-fishes link their own class to that of the amphibia. In early life the amphibious frog is in effect a fish. Archegosaurus minor joins the Batrachians to the Saurians. The reptiles and birds are united by Archæopteryx macrura from Solenhofen, with its long Saurian but feathered tail, and still more closely by Compsognathus from Stonesfield. † It is probable that the Amphibia lead by two divergent lines, on the one hand through the reptiles to the birds, and on the other through the lower to the higher orders of mammalia. Apart from external resemblances, the researches of anatomy are continually establishing with more and more certainty the affinity of all mammals, from the fossil mouse, the earliest mammal upon record, down to the living man.

The sub-kingdom of the Mollusks is divided into two great provinces; one, the Mollusca proper, among which are Cuttle-fish, Slugs, Pteropoda and bivalve oysters; the other, the Molluscoidea, containing the Brachiopoda, Polyzoa and Tunicata, to which last belong the Ascidians or sea-squirts, the now famous ancestors of mankind. But seeing that the vertebrates go back at least as far as the Old Red Sandstone, so far back at least we have a claim to a vertebrate ancestry. If any man is offended, if any man is wounded in his religious feelings by the affirmation of a probability that his forefather at a time long antecedent to the Old Red The very learned and worthy StillingSandstone period had no back-bone, no fleet, in the Third Book of his Origines rudiment of a tail, such a man, I cannot Sacra, remarks that the heathen philosohelp thinking, must have inherited some phers were much puzzled through not of the softness of his Molluscan progeni- knowing the doctrine of the Fall of Adam. tor. On the affinities between the various" It was very strange that since reason classes and orders of this sub-kingdom, we have not time to dwell. It is the subkingdom which upon the whole approach

Carpenter's Animal Physiology, § 184. Ed. 1851. As an interesting sample of these affinities, we may cite Professor Owen's observation that the respiratory organ in Lingula (a brachiopod) may be paralleled with one of the transitory states of that organ in the Lamelli

branchs, and that in both Terebratula and Orbicula it is comparable with a still earlier stage of the respiratory system in the embryo Lamellibranch. Palæontological Society's vol. for 1853.

ought to have the command of passions, by their (the philosophers') own acknowledgment, the brutish part of the soul should so master and enslave the rational, and the beast should still cast the rider in man! the sensitive appetite should throw off the power of rhyεμovikov, of that faculty of the soul which was de

Rolleston, Forms of Animal Life, p. lxxxi.

+ Lyell's Student's Elements of Geology, p. 316.

signed for the government of all the rest." It is strange that so ingenious a writer should have attributed this condition of man's nature to the Fall of Adam, when it is obvious at a glance that the Fall of Adam is itself to be attributed to this condition. The Fall was the consequence, and not the cause. Men's passions do not overmaster their reason because Adam transgressed, but Adam transgressed because he allowed his passions

to overmaster his reason.

How, then, are we to explain this heterogeneous compound in our nature of the beast and the rider, in which as Pagan philosopher and Christian divine alike confess, the beast is often the more powerful of the two associates? The theory of Evolution explains it. It explains how it is that the lower faculties inherited from a long line of brute ancestry are sometimes stronger than the nobler and more recently acquired endowments, since by the ordinary laws of inheritance, characters that have been long persistent in a race have a general tendency to prevail over later variations. No other theory explains why it is that we butcher one another for the sake, as we say, of peace; why we spend half our lives in eating, drinking and sleeping, and the other half in acquiring the means to eat and drink and sleep; why we freely praise the highest forms of virtue, and follow with equal freedom the poor selfishnesses of animal life; why we call not the miserable Lazarus to share our feasts; why we, for our personal comfort, jeopardy and sacrifice the lives of men on the ocean, in the mine, in the factory, although in poetry and sermons each of these men, as much as ourselves, is "a paragon of animals," "the image of God," "an immortal soul." The way in which men treat their fellows in peace as well as in war, points too plainly to an origin not humane for us to deny it on the strength of now being human. But because some human natures, in spite of their low original, are in truth noble, loving, pure, this same theory, which binds them historically to an ignoble past, binds them prophetically, as the hopes and promises of religion bind them, to a far more glorious future.

From Good Words. THE PRESCOTTS OF PAMPHILLON. BY MRS. PARR, AUTHOR OF "DOROTHY FOX."

CHAPTER XI.

A MISUNDERSTANDING.

EARLY in July Leo Despard arrived in Mallett, and took up his abode with Aunt Lydia, whose joy at having him with her was only equalled by Hero's light-hearted happiness. What a summer this promised to be for her! - Leo near, and the prospect of Sir Stephen and Mrs. Prescott's visit to Combe.

"I am so glad you are going to be here, Leo," she said.

"And I am so glad that you told me at I set about getonce about these forts.

ting the appointment that very day."
Hero's face glowed with happiness.
"How good of you! I hope you will
not find it very dull. Do you think you

will?"

"Well, perhaps away from you, I shall ; so you must be very good to me, and let me bother and worry you to my heart's

content."

Only fancy," laughed Hero. "When I told you at first about the forts it was I never dreamed that you only as news. would think of getting charge of them. How long do you say they will take to

build?"

"Three or four months at the least; so you see, it would have been very disagreeable to have had one of our fellows poking and prying into everything, and getting to know about everybody's ways and means, which I am not at all anxious should be known. I daresay Staveley His peoPierrepoint might have got it. ple move in high society. It would have been confoundedly awkward."

"Would it?" said Hero; for Leo's words jarred, as they sometimes did, against her frank nature; "I don't know that. I have not met many grand people, certainly; but I rather fancy they are like ourselves, and take very little notice of how people live, as long as they are nice; it was so with Sir Stephen."

"Sir Stephen!" repeated Leo. "Upon my word, I am sick of hearing that man's name. The way you Mallett people have fallen down and worshipped him amuses me immensely. By all I hear of him, he must be a precious snob."

"Indeed, he is nothing of the kind," said Hero warmly. “Nobody could be more unaffected and simple. I suppose it must be our fault that we have given