GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 319 



inhabited by their progenitor. If it can be shown to 

 be almost invariably the case, that a region, of which 

 most of its inhabitants are closely related to, or belong 

 to the same genera with the species of a second region, 

 has probably received at some former period immigrants 

 from this other region, my theory will be strengthened ; 

 for we can clearly understand, on the principle of 

 modification, why the inhabitants of a region should be 

 related to those of another region, whence it has been 

 stocked. A volcanic island, for instance, upheaved and 

 formed at the distance of a few hundreds of miles from a 

 continent, would probably receive from it in the course 

 of time a few colonists, and their descendants, though 

 modified, would still be plainly related by inheritance to 

 the inhabitants of the continent. Cases of this nature 

 are common, and are, as we shall hereafter more fully 

 see, inexplicable on the theory of independent creation. 

 This view of the relation of species in one region to 

 those in another, does not differ much (by substituting 

 the word variety for species) from that lately advanced 

 in an ingenious paper by Mr. Wallace, in which he con- 

 cludes, that ' every species has come into existence 

 coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing 

 closely allied species.' And I now know from corre- 

 spondence, that this coincidence he attributes to genera- 

 tion with modification. 



The previous remarks on e single and multiple 

 centres of creation' do not directly bear on another 

 allied question, — namely whether all the individuals of 

 the same species have descended from a single pair, 

 or single hermaphrodite, or whether, as some authors 

 suppose, from many individuals simultaneously created. 

 With those organic beings which never intercross (if 

 such exist), the species, on my theory, must have de- 

 scended from a succession of improved varieties, which 

 will never have blended with other individuals or varie- 

 ties, but will have supplanted each other ; so that, at each 

 successive stage of modification and improvement, all 

 the individuals of each variety will have descended from 

 a single parent. But in the majority of cases, namely, 



