18 SPECIES NOT 



Darwin's have been received with much more 

 favour, although, I think, the same arguments 

 which condemned the former may be brought 

 with stronger force against the latter. Mr. 

 Darwin is a man of high reputation, and his 

 work is written with fairness and candour, and 

 is submitted full of doubt from the author's 

 pen. There are difficulties which Mr. Darwin 

 knows full well must be surmounted before his 

 work can be received as the development of a 

 sound theory. These objections he has himself 

 for the most part anticipated and combated ; but 

 before we look into this part of the subject, it 

 may be profitable to say a few words upon, t 



Secondly, Does Mr. Darwin's law of variation 

 actually exist in nature? 



That species vary I fully admit: that they 

 do so by the operation of a natural law, I am 

 equally confident is not true. It is quite clear 

 that a natural law cannot be special or selec- 

 tive, for it would thus at once lose its claim 

 to the title of a law. If you take a pigeon, 

 or an ox, and alter its habits of life, you place 

 it under circumstances it was never designed to 

 occupy. You pamper it with food of the finest 

 quality, and just as the larva of the worker bee 

 is fed up into greater size, and from a state 

 of barrenness to one of fertility; so the pigeon 

 will become altered both in size and colour, and 

 form and fertility. In its wild state the blue 

 rock builds once or twice a year; when you 

 have domesticated it, and crossed it, and altered 



