any use.

"In the case of the starling, the young birds which migrate at the end of June, are not followed by the parents until the end of September. Now in this case, scarcity of food can hardly have been the cause for the departure of the young birds, since there must have been a sufficient supply to enable the old birds to remain three months longer. Nor can we lay down this earlier departure. to the influence of cold; for, as a rule, a rise rather than a fall of temperature takes place in the months succeeding June" therefore with regard to the actual cur res sit of the migrations of birds, wise men will find themselves under the masterful necessity of confessing complete ignorance.

:

1

So with regard to the migrations of other animals.—They are in the same plight regarding these amazing movements amongst other animals. Herr Gätke learns from his brother that it is quite common in Texas "for cattle which have been driven 200 miles out into the country to return to their native home across pathless tracts and forests" which, of course, neither they nor their ancestors ever saw before. I am assured by a Canadian friend, that horses show similar instincts on the Canadian ranches.

Still more amazing, if possible, are the migrations of beetles and nocturnal lepidoptera. Among the latter, Plusiagamma travel from Slesvick-Holstein to England across the North Sea. They pass this island (Heligoland) in enormous swarms, resembling, as seen from the lighthouse, a dense snowstorm driven by a light breeze. Thus on the night 15th and 16th August 1882, with a very light south wind, from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. millions of Plusiagamma were travelling from east to west like a dense snowstorm. .. Now it is quite impossible that these moths should be able to collect experiences of any kind during this single migration of their life; which, moreover, is performed in 1 Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory, p. 145.

2 Ib. p. 139.

the darkness of night across a wide expanse of water; and even, if they did, these would be perfectly useless, for these migrants die shortly after their autumn migration without having produced further offspring to which they could commit their experiences, either by hereditary transmission or by personal instruction." He regards the whole operation "as a means to an end of an instinctive and unconscious agency." 1 Such facts as he adduces, should despatch enormous quantities of biological and evolutionary literature to the general Rubbish-Shoot.

And also nomadic tribes.-So also with regard to the wandering tribes of the human race. Herr Gätke records a traveller's interesting experiences among the Samoyedes :— "Overjoyed at having at last discovered in these men, my interpreters of that great mystery of nature, the capacity of orientation possessed by animals, I endeavoured to draw out from them the secret of their art and pressed them on every possible opportunity. They, however, only looked at me in a stupefied manner, were surprised at my astonishment, and supposed that that was an ordinary everyday occurrence and self-evident; whereas, on the other hand, our inability of finding our way seemed to them quite incomprehensible. At last they completely disarmed me by the question, 'Well, and how is it that the little arctic fox finds her way on the great tundra without ever going astray?' . . . In one case which he considered doubtful, von Middendorff insisted on following his compass, but very soon made the highly surprising discovery that his compass, and not the directive sense of the Samoyedes, had deceived him.' Hence the Samoyedes too, wandered in the right track without being able to give a reason for doing so; or, in other words, they were led by instinct." 2

it

The evolutionary theory of instinct, an idle tale. Thus appears that we cannot come to any positive conclusion

1 Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory, pp. 137–9.

2 lb. p. 134.

touching the real nature of instinct, the data obtainable being so hopelessly insufficient and even contradictory, as to render such a conclusion unwarrantable. Indeed it would appear that there is no way of settling this question until we can enter into articulate converse with the lower animals, or be furnished with the power of participating in their actual consciousness. It is therefore one of these innumerable questions which we shall do well to leave alone one belonging to the domain of a wise agnosticism. The only certain conclusion to be drawn from the wonderful facts by which we are confronted is that the evolutionary theory of instinct is an idle tale.

Or how are we to account, say, for the hunger-enduring capabilities of some animals? Why should a spider be able to fast for a year, a toad for fourteen months, a beetle for three years? whilst other animals will scarcely survive as many days. Inherited tendency" of some kind? A mere cloak for ignorance.

An evolutionary assumption. With regard to the evolution hypothesis as a whole, Mr. Clodd actually assumes that "the function creates the organ" 2-not merely that the exercise of the function improves the organ, which is rational and true, but actually that "the function creates the organ." Now, compared to this inversion of Common Sense, the putting of the cart before the horse is quite a venial and pleasant little error; for in the latter case, the noble quadruped might, for a change, be induced to push the cart instead of hauling it; but when a man gravely assures you, or assumes that "the function creates the organ"-in other words, that sight creates the eye; walking, the feet; food, the digestive organs-! He who speaks thus, disqualifies himself as a scientific witness.

1 Goldsmith's Animated Nature, vol. i., note, p. 186.

2 The Story of Creation, p. 73. This dogma, however, he contradicts, happily, in the same book-" the organs exist for the work which they have to do, not the work for the organs.' P. 178.

His mind regarding such questions, seems to be in a "primordial, nebulous, non-luminous state." It is alarming to have "teachers," "scientists," "savants" of this kind let loose amongst simple people.

2. The Unknowable touching Eggs. Again, why should a fully organised, common hen's egg carefully sat upon for three weeks by a common hen, bring forth a chicken? Nobody can tell us anything about it beyond the wellknown facts of the case. No man can enter into the critical "why"? of the business at all. The keenest biologist is, essentially, as ignorant about it as the veriest Hodge. Let one domestic hen's egg be placed in the centre of a large table, and let all the philosophers in the world be comfortably seated round about it, and the most philosophical thing that the assembled philosophers could do concerning it, would be-simply to gaze at the egg with intelligent, but speechless, wonder. Why should that egg possess the potentiality of yielding a chicken? The thing is as inscrutable as Orion or the Pleiades. On such an occasion, devout silence would be more instructive than a thousand orations upon Eggs. And yet some people go swaggering about as if the Universe were too small for them!

The Origin of Eggs ?—Then as to the familiar question, the first origin of eggs! Did the egg precede the hen, or the hen, the egg? Here is a question to make even the toughest metaphysical or biological brain dizzy. I always think it argues great intellectual power and great wisdom in a philosopher, when he knows at what point to stop speaking, or even thinking-at what point to let his mind rise into an attitude of reverent wonder. If our savants would but generally adopt this most rational attitude, what a deliverance it would be to us all, in the matter of books! This, the terrestrial origin and the fecundity of eggs, though they can be bought at one shilling per dozen, is one of those questions most fit to call forth silence and wonder.

The common hen's egg remains to this day as inscrutable in its first origin and fecundity-as wonderful almost, as the Universe-the universal Egg.

Then even as to the origin of the first hen as domestic : who caught and tamed the first one? How comes it to-day, to be substantially the same kind of fowl from China to Peru? It is ignorance, for the most part, that loads our bookshelves-not knowledge.

It is a great pity but the intellectual health of the philosopher could be ascertained by an examination of his tongue. If this could be done, we should frequently find it indicating a bad state of mental dyspepsia.

3. The Unknowable in Vegetation.—If we turn to such a question as to the "why" of vegetation, we are equally ill off for an answer. Why should a young tree planted appropriately in the ground take root and grow? Why should wheat sown in certain well-known circumstances, germinate, grow up, and reproduce itself? Why such incalculable fecundity and variety in Nature at large? We really know almost nothing about it but the facts of germination, etc., and their manner, and the conditions under which such processes will take place. In such processes, it need scarcely be said that we do not apprehend the real nature, the cur res sit, of germination and growth.

Why should an acorn fitly planted and tended, produce an oak tree? Cur res sit? Nature furnishes us with no information on the subject, beyond the facts of the case.

4. Origins in general.-But not only do some of the philosophers try to account for the origin of eggs; they want to account for the origin of everything. "The essential function of science," they tell us, without any trace of a redeeming smile on their countenance, such as one finds on that of Sir John Maundevile, "the essential function of science is to reduce apparently disparate phenomena to the expression of a single law." Why they should have taken "a single law" so much to heart,