which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as
immoral. We will, if you please, test this view by the
circumstantial evidence alone; for, from what I have said, you
will understand that I do not propose to discuss the question of
what testimonial evidence is to be adduced in favour of it.
If those whose business it is to judge are not at one as to the
authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is offered,
nor as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of
such evidence is superfluous.

But I may be permitted to regret this necessity of rejecting the
testimonial evidence the less, because the examination of the
circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that
it is incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but that, so far as
it goes, it is contrary to the hypothesis.

The considerations upon which I base this conclusion are of the
simplest possible character. The Miltonic hypothesis contains
assertions of a very definite character relating to the
succession of living forms. It is stated that plants, for
example, made their appearance upon the third day, and not
before. And you will understand that what the poet means by
plants are such plants as now live, the ancestors, in the
ordinary way of propagation of like by like, of the trees and
shrubs which flourish in the present world. It must needs be so;
for, if they were different, either the existing plants have
been the result of a separate origination since that described
by Milton, of which we have no record, nor any ground for
supposition that such an occurrence has taken place; or else
they have arisen by a process of evolution from the