gymnastics on the tip end of the cross-the centre of gravity is in the wrong place, and the least touch, the least hair's-breadth of wavering, is sufficient to bring down ruin. Or an analogy may be imaged forth by those delicate chemical unions of matter, such as gunpowder and fulminating silver, where the elementary particles are combined indeed, but can hardly be moved without one flying one way and one another, leaving little that is visible or satisfactory behind them. Or a more homely comparison may be drawn from ill-made melted butter, which is really not melted butter at all, but a delicately manipulated commingling of water, flour, and oil. Unless the cook be skilful, the flour settles in one direction, the water runs a second way, and the oil floats a third; proving that melted butter, like gallinaceous monstrosities, is an unnatural affair. The Zoological Society also possesses hybrids between the Guinea Fowl and the Domestic Fowl; curious creatures, that are sterile hitherto, and look as if they intended so to remain. Their plumage is barred, not spotted, with dirty white and grey; there is something between a ruff and a hackle hanging around their necks; and every poulterer who sees them must wonder, not that they do not multiply, but that they ever came into the world at all. It is very important, not only for practical purposes, but also as involving a great physiological principle, to show that species and varieties are permanent, not ever-changing; that like does beget like; and that creatures are not moulded and modified according to circumstances, and do not remodel their members or acquire new ones, as the exigency of their situation for the time being demands. In the case of Fowls, the theory of progressive development and change is certainly unsupported by evidence, though they and other domesticated animals are supposed to be instances in which it is peculiarly likely to be exemplified. Before the Christian era the varieties of fowl were not less numerous, but in many instances were probably identical with what we have at the present day. Colu

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mella particularly recommends as the best, those sorts that have five toes and white ears-the marks of our highly-esteemed breeds, the Dorking and the Spanish. He warns his contemporaries that Bantams "pumiliones aves" will prove troublesome, by preventing the eggs of larger birds from being properly fertilised. He dismisses the fighting breed as being foreign to his subject, which treated only of profitable sorts, and had nothing to do with cock-fighting. He mentions the Tanagric, the -Rhodian, the Chalcidic, and the Medic, as tall birds of high courage, but prefers their own common sort, nostrum vernaculum," for economical purposes, allowing, however, that a first cross produces fine chickens: " omnium tamen horum generum nothi sunt optimi pulli." Aristotle, nearly four hundred years earlier says, ȧi dè Αδριανικαὶ ἀλεκτορίδες ἐισὶ μὲν μικραὶ τὸ μέγεθος, τίκτουσι δὲ ἀν ἑκάστην ἡμέραν. ἐισὶ δὲ χαλεπαὶ, και κτείνονσι τοὺς νεοττοὺς πολλάκις, χρώματα δε πανταδαπὰ ἔχουσι.— But the Adrianic Hens are small indeed; but they lay every day. They are ill-tempered, and frequently kill the (he does not say their own) young. And they are of all sorts of colours." Many of our larger Bantams exactly tally to this, particularly in the savage propensity to kill chickens, which they discover to be substituted.

We may, therefore,. infer that our existing Domestic Fowls are not improvements or modifications of those Cocks that are now found wild in the East, but that they have as much right to be called original varieties or species (whichever term it may be thought right to apply to them) as any of those which are allowed to rank in the catalogues of the naturalist. The converse opinion, namely, that the forms of living creatures are undergoing perpetual changes, according to the circumstances under which they happen to be placed, has only to be stated in the exaggerated length to which some theorists have carried it, to refute itself by the outrageous shock it gives to experience and common sense. Buffon thus accounts for the existence of various species of Pheasants :-" Since no

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naturalist or traveller has given the least hint concerning the original abode of the Black-and-White (our Silver) Pheasant, we are obliged to form conjectures. inclined to suppose that, as the Pheasant of Georgia (the common species of our preserves) having migrated towards the east, and having fixed its residence in the southern or temperate provinces of China, has become the Painted (with us Golden) Pheasant; so, the White Pheasant, which is an inhabitant of our cold climates, or that of Tartary, having travelled into the northern provinces of China, has become the pencilled or silver kind: that it has there grown to a greater size than the original Pheasant, or that of Georgia, because it has found in those provinces food more plentiful and better suited to its nature; but that it betrays the marks of a new climate in its air, port, and external form; in all which it resembles the Painted Pheasant, but retains of the original Pheasant the red orbits, which have been even expanded from the the same causes undoubtedly that promoted the growth of its body, and gave it a superiority over the ordinary Pheasant." By this sort of gentle transmutation, any one bird may be easily manufactured from any other. Erasmus Darwin proceeds boldly to the work, and carries it out on a grand scale. "As Linnæus has conjectured in respect to the vegetable world, it is not impossible but the great variety of species of animals, which now tenant the earth, may have had their origin from the mixture of a few natural orders.

Dr.

"Such a promiscuous intercourse of animals is said to exist at this day in New South Wales, by Captain Hunter. And that not only amongst the quadrupeds and birds of different kinds, but even amongst the fish, and, as he believes, amongst the vegetables. He speaks of an animal between the opossum and the kangaroo, from the size of a sheep to that of a rat. Many fish seem to partake of the shark; some with a skait's head and shoulders, and the hind part of a shark; others with a shark's head and the body of a mullet; and some with a shark's head and

the flat body of a sting-ray. Many birds partake of the Parrot; some have the head, neck, and bill of a Parrot, with long straight feet and legs; others with legs and feet of a Parrot, with head and neck of a Sea-gull."-Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 499.

Again he continues, even yet more adventurously:— "Another great want felt by animals consists in the means of procuring food, which has diversified the forms of all species. Thus, the nose of the swine has become hard for the purpose of turning up the soil in search of insects and of roots. The trunk of the elephant is an elongation of the nose for the purpose of pulling down the branches of trees for his food, and for taking up water without bending his knees. Beasts of prey have acquired strong jaws or talons. Cattle have acquired a rough tongue and a rough palate to pull off the blades of grass, as cows and sheep. Some birds have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees, as the Finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of insects or roots, as Woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations, by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food, and to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement of them, for the purposes required.

"Would it then be too bold to imagine, that all warmblooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!"-Id. vol. i. p. 505.

These extracts are not given from any disrespect to the abilities or intentions of the writers, for they were both

men to whom science is much indebted, but to show what strange and startling conclusions may be arrived at by arguing from premises that are not founded on proved facts, but on plausibility and fashionable hypotheses merely. But we will now maintain unhesitatingly, that it was not Man or his domestication, or any inherent tendency in the creatures themselves, that gave feathered crests to the Poland Fowl, dwarfed the Bantam, expanded the Dorking, enlarged the Malay and Cochin-China Fowl, inspired courage to the Game Cock, or made the Hen, next to Woman, the most exemplary of mothers: unless we believe it was Man who arranged the strata in the ribs of the earth, and prescribed to the sea its everchanging boundaries. Man is powerful to have dominion; God alone is potent to create-His Providence to overrule. Not by Man, or Chance, or by generative force of an idol called Nature, have the things which we see, and the diversities in our living fellow-creatures, been brought about. No; most thankfully, no! Then would matters

have been far less harmoniously, far less benignantly arranged. It is our greatest consolation to feel assured that all the physical changes which this earth has undergone, and every renovation of its inhabitants, has been from the beginning foreordained by that all-wise and all-powerful Being, in whose presence (and we are ever in His presence) the best and greatest of us would be crushed into nothingness, did we not, to our comfort, believe that He is not the Creator merely, but the Father and Protector of every animated creature. "These wait all upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them meat in due season. When Thou givest it them, they gather it, and when Thou openest Thy hand, they are filled with good. When Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled. When Thou takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their dust."