16 SPECIKS NOT 



Now Mr. Darwin goes with Lamarck and the 

 u Author of the Vestiges" in the main and im- 

 portant parts of their theories. But he goes 

 further, and believes not only in the transmutation 

 of species, but also of families, orders, and cln- 

 and also in the origin of all in one primordial 

 form, "into which the breath of life was first 

 breathed." 



The only real difference between Mr. Darwin 

 and his two predecessors, is this: that while 

 the latter have each given a mode by which 

 they conceive the great changes they believe in 

 have been brought about, Mr. Darwin does no 

 such thing. Reduced to its simplest expression, 

 he believes in a law of variation not acting 

 uniformly, but producing here one form, there 

 another, which said forms having acquired 

 through this law an addition to, or alteration 

 in their structure, have transmitted this pecu- 

 liarity through a series of ages, by which time 

 another change has taken place in one or more 

 members of the descendants of the altered ani- 

 mal, which, again passing through a great number 

 of generations, altering gradually through each, 

 becomes again changed, and that this process, 

 acting upon all organized forms, has, during 

 unnumbered ages, produced the different forms 

 of man, quadruped, bird, reptile, tish, mollusk, 

 aimelidan, radiata, protozoan, and plant. He 

 further believes that there never has been any 

 special act of creation, except that of the first 

 undescrihed and imaginable form! 



