variation, on account of its peculiar utility. The first supposition is not in accordance with the evolution theory; for that theory rejects all idea of conscious exertion on the part of any of the organisms. The second supposition leads us at once to the inquiry, how came it to be imposed upon a whole group of beings as a law of nature, that whatever utility of structure was of paramount importance to the whole group should be preserved against the modifying influences that were to produce species differing absolutely from each other, through hundreds of thousands of varieties, in every other feature of their existence? Can we get along here without the hypothesis of design? And, if there was such design, how does the fact of this uniformity amid such diversity become an argument against the hypothesis of a Creator? Or, how does it tend to displace the hypothesis of special creations, when we find that the very process of so-called evolution has failed to break the uniformity of a pattern that is conceded not to have been the result of chance, although that pattern was exposed to just as many and as powerful causes of modification as those which are assumed to have brought about the modifications in every other feature of the animal existence? The truth would seem to be, that the uniformity amid so great a diversity was either the result of a design which placed it out of the reach of all the modifying influences, or else it has, by a most incalculable result, escaped from the effect of those influences by a chance in which the ratio of one to infinity can alone measure the probability of such an escape.