It has no basis of
fact. There are but three kinds of locomotion that we know of: in the
water, on the ground, and through the air; for all these purposes a
half-formed wing would be an impediment.
The Duke devotes almost a whole chapter of his interesting book to the
consideration of "contrivance in the machinery for flight." The
conditions to secure regulated movement through the atmosphere are so
numerous, so complicated, and so conflicting, that the problem never has
been solved by human ingenuity. In the structure of the bird it is
solved to perfection. As we are not writing a teleological argument, but
only producing evidence that Darwinism excludes teleology, we cannot
follow the details which prove that the wing of the gannet or swift is
almost as wonderful and beautiful a specimen of contrivance as the eye
of the eagle.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] _Reign of Law_. London, 1867, p. 40.
[32] _Reign of Law_. London, 1867, p. 37.
[33] _Reign of Law_, pp. 247, 248.
_Agassiz._
Every one knows that the illustrious Agassiz, over whose recent grave
the world stands weeping, was from the beginning a pronounced and
earnest opponent of Mr. Darwin's theory. He wrote as a naturalist, and
therefore his objections are principally directed against the theory of
evolution, which he regarded as not only destitute of any scientific
basis, but as subversive of the best established facts in zooelogy.
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