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THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 
Mr. Darwin’s system is provided with two origins of species, the 
first is the primordial form, the parent of all forms, in itself “ very 
simple” and of very low organization, which was created and divinely 
endowed with life. Of this we hear no more after it has been once 
mentioned ; for the second form, or the first variety, was not created, 
but was the production of natural selection. To this we shall return 
after discussing the more important and, we may say, the real origin 
of species in this theory, as the primordial form is of no use to the 
general plan, and mars the grand principle on which the whole has 
been constructed. 
The real origin, then, of species in the Darwinian system is an ima- . 
ginary progenitor of each grand class, whether it be an order or a 
genus, for that is not very clearly stated; at any rate, however, it is 
supposed that each very distinct genus had a peculiar progenitcr, not 
capable of description, but somehow or other uniting in itself the chief 
peculiarities discernible in all species that have descended from it. 
r. Darwin mentions the progenitor of the genus Zguus, and of the 
bat, and also of the bustard and ostrich, and alludes to a common an- 
cestor of the horse and tapirs; but, above all these and before them 
all, there was also a common progenitor of all vertebrated animals, 
some creatures unlike any known animal, and possessing more verte- 
bre than any of its descendants. This animal must of course have 
been the progenitor of all the other progenitors of the different verte- 
brated genera, but this is mentioned only once in the theory. 
Thus is the doctrine stated in general terms :— 
“ The points in which all the species of a genus resemble each 
other, and in which they differ from the species of some other genus, 
are called generic characters ; and these characters in common Z aftri- 
bute to inheritance from a common progenitor, for it ean rarely have 
happened that natural selection will have modified several species 
fitted to more or less widely different habits in exactly the same man- 
ner, and as these so-called generic characters have been inherited from 
a remote period, since the period when the species first br anched off from 
their common progenitor, and subsequently. has not varied or come to 
differ in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not probable that 
they should vary at the present day. On the other hand, the points 
