ancestral generosity. This pious faith has been rudely shaken by the study of anatomy, and by the unpleasant discovery that the number of male ribs is not odd; it now exists only, I fear, in country villages where science classes under South Kensington have not yet exerted their sceptic-making influence, and where people do not enquire too curiously into their internal arrangements.
Gen. iii. presents us with a pleasant picture of intercourse with the lower animals before the fall of our first parents brought sin into the world. What does scientific zoology know of a talking serpent? Can any scientist of to-day pretend that he has ever met with a specimen able to talk? Yet this remarkable snake talked with great effect, and we owe to his well-directed eloquence the inestimable blessing by which, as God said, "the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (v. 22). The serpent in question was remarkable in ways other than his gift of speech. After God had cursed him, he went about as snakes do now, but before that he progressed on his back, or his head, or his tail, in a manner since become as old-fashioned as the minuet.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life, are plants quite beyond the reach of modern botany. It would have been a priceless blessing for mankind if Adam and Eve had smuggled some cuttings of these out of the garden, for knowledge now has to be painfully acquired, while life closes when experience has brought its highest utility. It is, perhaps, comforting to know that in the middle of the street of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and on either side of the river, there is a tree of life (Rev. xxii., 1, 2), which bears a different sort of fruit every month—proving incidentally how very much horticulture has advanced in that neighborhood—but the thought intrudes, despite all effort, that we could dispense with the tree of life after we have risen to immortality, while it would be invaluable to us as mortals here. It requires great faith to feel that God is good in withholding the tree of life while it would be useful, and in giving it to us when it will be superfluous.
Gen. xxx., 37—42, gives some suggestions which breeders of cattle will find useful. Peeled rods of green poplar, hazel, and chesnut will influence the color of the young of sheep and cattle. There is no reason why they should,
