16 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. 



VI. 



plicable" (p. 292) ; and his explanation of the absence of the 

 transitional forms which must have existed, according to his 

 theory of "minute modifications in time," between such forms as 

 the elephant, the giraffe, the galeopithecus, the bats, and the or- 

 dinary quadrupeds, is very unsatisfactory. His theory of rudi- 

 mentary organs, also, is extremely imperfect. He accounts for 

 all such from the disuse of previous jperfeet organs (p. 408) ; but 

 he nowhere hints at the far more essential question as to how 

 these original organs became perfect ; for upon his own general 

 hypothesis they must have been rudimentary in the beginning. 

 With regret, and after the closest and most sincere examination 

 of all his remarks upon this subject, we confess that we have 

 rarely seen such an absolute lack of logical argument as is evinced 

 in the section upon rudimentary and functionless structures. In 

 fact, the immense amount of evidence which he has collected does 

 not seem to us to bear upon the main point, the origin of sjjecies, 

 at all, but only upon the preservation of favourahle individual 

 variations. 



We have not space for further presentation of our own difficul- 

 ties or those which others have urged against the theory of 

 natural selection, and will simply quote the general grounds upon 

 which Prof. Mivart has been led, with no prejudice against it, to 

 regard that theory as playing only a subordinate part in the pro- 

 duction of new species (p. 21) : 



" Natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient 

 stages of useful structures. It does not harmonize with the co- 

 existence of closely similar structures of diverse origin." 



" Certain fossil transitional forms are absent which miaht have 

 been expected to be present ; and some facts of geographical dis- 

 tribution supplement other difficulties. There are many remark- 

 able phenomena in organic forms upon which natural selection 

 throws no lio-ht whatever." 



" Still other objections may be brought against the hypothesis 

 of ' pangenesis'-'^ which, professing as it does to explain great dif- 

 ficulties, seems to do so by presenting others not less great — 

 almost to be the explanation of ohsaunim 2^€r ohscuriusy 



These difficulties, which are set forth with equal cogency and 

 fairness in the earlier chapters of the " Genesis of Species," have 



* Propounded at the close of the work upon '• Variation under 

 Domestication." 



