It is evidently part of the divine plan that species should develop from a lower to a higher condition. We see this in the improvements in the breeds of our domestic animals, as well as in the wild animals that now live, as compared with the remains of the ancient Saurians that once roamed over the earth. The doctrine of "Natural Selection" or "Survival of the Fittest," as Huxley terms it, is also a law of nature. We see this illustrated at the present time in the history of races of men and species of animals. The weaker races of men are gradually disappearing while those nations who possess the highest physical, mental and moral characteristics are extending their dominion over the earth. In the history of animals this is likewise apparent. The gigantic, unwieldy ox, the Urus of Caesar, has been extinct since Roman times. The Auroch, another ox whose bones are frequently found in the same strata with extinct animals, would have been now entirely extinct but for the imperial edict which preserves a few in the forest of Lithuania. The gigantic birds Dinornis and Aptornis have but recently passed away. Perfect skeletons of them are still preserved in the museum of Christchurch, New Zealand. From {189} the measurement of these skeletons they are estimated to have been nearly or quite twelve feet high. The Dodo, a heavy, clumsy bird, of fifty pounds' weight, with loose, downy feathers, and imperfect wings like a new-born chicken, became extinct only about 150 or 200 years ago. The Apteryx of Australia, which of all living birds most resembles some of the extinct species, still survives, ready to disappear. The lion, tiger, bison (or buffalo), elephant, rhinoceros, and, in fact, all the fiercer and larger animals, are even now disappearing before the advance of civilized man. [ILLUSTRATION: SKELETON OF A MAN AND THAT OF A DINORNIS SHOWING COMPARATIVE SIZE.] {190} The law of variation, as expressed by Darwin, is true with certain limitations. For example, every person must admit a vast change in the condition of the best breeds of our domestic swine, from their ancestors, the wild boars of medieval Europe. Yet nowhere can be found a single instance of _transmutation of species_. For example, if we should trace the pedigree of a horse backwards through a thousand generations we should find that the original animal was also a horse, though probably a very inferior animal. Of all the living animals and fossil remains of extinct ones, though thousands of specimens have been discovered, yet of land animals and the higher orders of creation not a single instance of transmutation can be found. In all this we see a beautiful agreement with the divine record, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so" (_Gen. i_, 24).