[1]

DARWIN'S MONKEY.

TO THE EDITOR OF BASSETTS' DAILY CHRONICLE.

SIR.—I will be more correct in giving exact assertions from this learned author, for banter will no longer do when morality is at stake—nay more, Heaven and God's glory. To give the unfortunate gentleman credit, he does try to put things in a true light; but where no light is, no light can proceed from. Like all the other professors that I have confounded, he bases his theory on a hypothesis—while I deny all hypothesis that are not supported by observation (in temporal matters), for I hold that man has no temporal knowledge but what he, has received from observations, whether from man or brute. He says, "In attempting to trace the genealogy of man lower down in the series, we become involved in greater obscurity.… Every evolutionist," this is his hobby—"evolution," like Sir Issac Newton's "gravitation" and Laplace's "perturbation," and Herschell's "centripital," and somebody else's "centrifugal." If he could prove evolution his theory was carried. Every evolutionist will admit that the five great vertebrate classes,—namely, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes, are descended from some one prototype, for they have much in commott, as the class of fishes is the most lowly organised and appeared before the others." Who told him this, or by what authority does he say there was a fish before a pig? "We may conclude," he says, "that all the others are derived from some fish animal."

Well, now, I begin to ask him one question regarding this assertion. What will be the probable "evolution" next of man as he has arrived at a position beyond all his "progenitors" of being erect, with his face capable of looking up to adore God? He must change according to the "evolutions," and will his next change be on his back?—and if he does not change he is a perfect being, destined for some great object in his present state.

As I will give only one proof of confutation in each letter, I will wait for an answer to this for three posts, and will continue the rest of his assertions daily.—Yours truly,

CHARLES O'SHAUGHNESSY.

Kilfinane, January 13, 1876.