DIVERSIFIED TYPES FOUND EVERYWHERE. 15 



SECTION II. 



SIMULTANEOUS EXISTENCE OF THE MOST DIVERSIFIED TYPES 

 TINDER IDENTICAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 



It is a fact, which seems to be entirely overlooked by 

 those who assume an extensive influence of physical 

 causes upon the very existence of organized beings, that 

 the most diversified types of animals and plants are every- 

 where found under identical circumstances. The smallest 

 sheet of fresh water, every point upon the sea-shore, every 

 acre of dry land teems with a variety of animals and plants. 

 The narrower the boundaries which are assigned as the 

 primitive home of all these beings, the more uniform must 

 be the conditions under which they must be assumed to 

 have originated ; so uniform, indeed, that in the end the 

 inference would be, that the same physical causes can 

 produce the most diversified effects. 1 To concede, on 



1 In order to appreciate fully the pearance, the conditions necessary to 

 difficulty alluded to here, it is only their growth must have been pro- 

 necessary to remember how compli- vided for, if, as I believe, they were 

 cated, and at the same time how created as eggs, which conditions 

 localized, the conditions are, under must have been conformable to those 

 which animals multiply. The egg in which the living representatives of 

 originates in a special organ, the the types first produced now repro- 

 ovary ; it grows there to a certain" duce themselves. If it were assumed 

 size, until it requires fecundation, that they originated in a more ad- 

 that is, the influence of another liv- vauced stage of life, the difficulties 

 ing being, or, at least, of the product would be still greater, as a moment's 

 of another organ, the spermary, to consideration cannot fail to show, 

 determine the further development especially if it is remembered how 

 of the germ, which, under the most complicated the structure of some of 

 diversified conditions, in different the animals was which are known to 

 species, passes successively through have been among the first inhabit- 

 all those changes which lead to the ants of our globe. When investigat- 

 formation of a new perfect being. I iiig this subject, it is of course neces- 

 would ask then, Is it probable that sary to consider the first appearance 

 the circumstances under which ani- of animals and plants upon the basis 

 rnals and plants originated for the of probabilities only, or even simply 

 first time can be much simpler, or upon that of possibilities ; as with re- 

 even as simple, as the conditions ference to the first-born, at least, the 

 necessary for their reproduction only transmutation theory furnishes no 

 after they have once been created ? explanation of their existence. For 

 Preliminary, then, to their first ap- every species belonging to the first 



