296 CREATION BY LAW. 



claim to be new, is of the same nature as the difficulty 

 of distinguishing varieties and species, because neither 

 are absolute new creations, but both are alike de- 

 scendants of pre-existing forms, from which and from 

 each other they differ by varying and often imper- 

 ceptible degrees. It appears, then, that however plau- 

 sible this writer's objections may seem, whenever he 

 descends from generalities to any specific statement, 

 his supposed difficulties turn out to be in reality 

 strongly confirmatory of Mr. Darwin's view. 



TIte " Times," on Natural Selection. 



The extraordinary misconception of the whole sub- 

 ject by popular writers and reviewers, is well shown 

 by an article which appeared in the Times news- 

 paper on (t The Reign of Law." Alluding to the 

 supposed economy of nature, in the adaptation of 

 each species to its own place and its special use, the 

 reviewer remarks : "To this universal law of the 

 greatest economy, the law of natural selection stands 

 in direct antagonism as the law of ' greatest possible 

 waste ' of time and of creative power. To conceive 

 a duck with webbed feet and a spoon-shaped bill, 

 living by suction, to pass naturally into a gull with 

 webbed feet and a knife-like bill, living on flesh, in 

 the longest possible time and in the most laborious 

 possible way, we may conceive it to pass from the 

 one to the other state by natural selection. The battle 

 of life the ducks will have to fight will increase in 

 peril continually as they cease (with the change of 



