the bad swimmers if they had not been able to
swim at all, and had stuck to the wreck.

The theory, of which a brief sample has been
given, entails the vastest consequences. We
are no longer to look at an organic being as a
savage looks at a ship—as at something wholly
beyond his comprehension; we are to regard
every production of nature as one which has had
a history; we are to contemplate every complex
structure and instinct as the summing up of
many contrivances, each useful to the possessor,
nearly in the same way as when we look at any
great mechanical invention as the summing up
of the labour, the experience, the reason, and
even the blunders, of numerous workmen. The
natural system of classification becomes a
genealogical arrangement, in which we have to
discover the lines of descent by the most permanent
characters, however slight their vital
importance may be; because the real affinities
of all organic beings are due to inheritance or
community of descent. Natural Selection can
only act through and for the good of each being;
acting by competition, it adapts the inhabitants
of each country only in relation to the degree of
perfection of their associates; so that we need
feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one
country (although on the ordinary view
supposed to have been specially created and adapted
for that country) being beaten and supplanted
by the naturalised productions from another
land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the
contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge,
absolutely perfect; and if some of them be
abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not
marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's
own death; at the instinctive hatred of the
queen bee for her own fertile daughters; and at
other such cases.

Judging from the past, we are to infer that
not one living species will transmit its unaltered
likeness to a distant futurity. And, of the
species now living, very few will transmit
progeny of any kind to a far-distant futurity; for
the manner in which all organic beings are
grouped, shows that the greater number of
species of each genus, and all the species of many
genera, have left no descendants, but have
become utterly extinct. We can so far take a
prophetic glance into futurity as to foretel that
it will be the common and widely-spread species,
belonging to the larger and dominant groups,
which will ultimately prevail and procreate new
and dominant species. And as Natural Selection
works solely by and for the good of each being,
all corporeal and mental endowments will tend
to progress towards perfection. Thus, from the
war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of
conceiving, namely, the production of the higher
animals, directly follows.

Timid persons, who purposely cultivate a
certain inertia of mind, and who love to cling to
their preconceived ideas, fearing to look at such
a mighty subject from an unauthorised and
unwonted point of view, may be reassured by the
reflection that, for theories, as for organised
beings, there is also a Natural Selection and a
Struggle for Life. The world has seen all sorts of
theories rise, have their day, and fall into neglect.
Those theories only survive which are based on
truth, as far as our intellectual faculties can at
present ascertain; such as the Newtonian theory
of universal gravitation. If Mr. Darwin's
theory be true, nothing can prevent its
ultimate and general reception, however much it
may pain and shock those to whom it is
propounded for the first time. If it be merely a
clever hypothesis, an ingenious hallucination,
to which a very industrious and able man has
devoted the greater and the best part of his life,
its failure will be nothing new in the history of
science. It will be a Penelope's web, which,
though woven with great skill and art, will be
ruthlessly unwoven, leaving to some more
competent artist the task of putting together a more
solid and enduring fabric.

ARDISON AND CO.

THE Island of Sardinia, one of the rare
Italian localities hitherto happily exempt from
the excitement of political passions, and the
disturbing influences which have seldom ceased
to trample the bosom of its continental parent,
has recently been startled by the discovery of a
moral disease in its domestic life, which will find
few parallels in the history of crime.

Most persons who, like the writer, have had
opportunities of studying the character and
social habits of the island Sards, bear willing
testimony to their quiet industry, their calm
content, their affectionate disposition, their
almost patriarchal practice of the relative
duties of host and guest, of master and servant,
and, lastly, to their cordial yet not undignified
appreciation of interest felt or courtesy
expressed by pilgrims from afar.

Petty crimes are of singularly rare occurrence.
The prisoners at this moment confined in the
gaols of Sassari and Cagliari are almost
exclusively importations—not children of the soil—
and the prison of the large town of Cagliari has
not for two years enclosed a single occupant. When
murder has, from time to tune, left its stain on
these otherwise satisfactory records, it has been
usually traceable to no meaner source than the
quick and fiery jealousy in all ages a notable
characteristic of this people, or to the lingering influence
of the deadly " vendetta" —inherited blood-
feud—which has sacrificed whole families, and
once depopulated an entire village for one girl.

There was, years ago, a certain village
beauty, whose list of lovers included every
disengaged male of the township, and this maiden
had three fierce brothers. Now, to salute the
lips of a fair lady in public, constitutes an
offence which, if not condoned by instant marriage,
entails an inevitable "vendetta" upon the
families concerned. In order, it seemed, to
bring matters to a crisis, the most impatient of
the suitors availed himself of a village fête, to
salute his beautiful mistress at the head of a
procession. He was not the favoured one, for