276 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



tinguish accurately kindred forms as so many "good 

 8])ecies." However, it has been found scarcely possible, in 

 any group, to make an accurate and consistent distinction 

 of such "genuine or good species." There are no two 

 zoologists, no two botanists, who agree in all cases as 

 to which of the nearly related forms of a genus are good 

 species, and which are not. All authors have different 

 views about them. In the genus HieraciuTn, for example, 

 one of the commonest genera of European plants, no less 

 than 800 species have been distinguished in Germany alone. 

 The botanist Fries, however, only admits 106, Koch only 52, 

 as "good species," and others accept scarcely 20. The 

 differences in the species of brambles (Rubus) are equally 

 great. Where one botanist makes more than a hundred 

 species, a second admits only about one half of that number, 

 a third only five or six, or even fewer species. The birds of 

 Germany have long been very accurately known. Bechstein, 

 in his careful " Natural History of German Birds," has dis- 

 tinguished 367 species, L. Reichenbach 879, Meyer and Wolff 

 406, and Brehm, a clergyman learned in ornithology, dis- 

 tinguishes even more than 900 different species. 



Thus we see that here, and, in fact, in every other domain 

 of systematic zoology and botany, the most arbitrary pro- 

 ceedings prevail, and, from the nature of the case, must 

 prevail. For it is quite impossible accurately to distinguish 

 varieties and races from so-called " good species." Varieties 

 are commencing species. The variability or adaptability of 

 species, under the influence of the struggle for life, necessi- 

 tates the continual and progressive separation or differentia- 

 tion of varieties, and the perpetual delimitation of new forms. 

 Whenever these are maintained throughout a number of 



