lower than land-babies? But even if they were, does he know about
the strange degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which one
finds sticking on ships' bottoms; or the still stranger degradation
of some cousins of theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk, so
shocking and ugly it is?

And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) that these
transformations only take place in the lower animals, and not in
the higher, say that that seems to little boys, and to some grown
people, a very strange fancy. For if the changes of the lower
animals are so wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should
not there be changes in the higher animals far more wonderful, and
far more difficult to discover? And may not man, the crown and
flower of all things, undergo some change as much more wonderful
than all the rest, as the Great Exhibition is more wonderful than a
rabbit-burrow? Let him answer that. And if he says (as he will)
that not having seen such a change in his experience, he is not
bound to believe it, ask him respectfully, where his microscope has
been? Does not each of us, in coming into this world, go through a
transformation just as wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a
butterfly? and do not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture,
tell us that that transformation is not the last? and that, though
what we shall be, we know not, yet we are here but as the crawling
caterpillar, and shall be hereafter as the perfect fly. The old
Greeks, heathens as they were, saw as much as that two thousand
years ago; and I care very little for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees
even less than they. And so forth, and so forth, till he is quite
cross. And then tell him that if there are no water-babies, at
least there ought to be; and that, at least, he cannot answer.