Preface.

These papers were written for a newspaper, and without any expectation that they would ever be issued in a collected form. A number of gentlemen having, however, expressed to strong desire to have them published as a pamphlet, the writer consented to that course. It became then a question whether they should be re-modelled to suit the altered shape, or allowed to go as they were. The supreme necessity for condensation in the original papers compelled the omission of many details in quotation and illustration, which might have been advantageously introduced; but it is apparent that to alter and enlarge them now would entail a radical change in the entire structure of the work, and it has been thought best to re-print the papers in the original shape, simply numbering the divisions which marked the order of their first appearance. The arguments advanced, therefore, must be regarded only as a suggestive outline, to be thought out by the reader.

A fair consideration of the obstacles to the acceptance of Darwinism will, the writer believes, confirm every dispassionate mind in the conviction that the vast chasms which are admitted by the most ardent evolutionists to be still unbridged, will for ever remain so, because the theory is in hopeless conflict with the well-established facts of Nature as they are commonly observed in the existing order of creation.