SPECIES NOT TEANSMUTABLE. 



CHAPTER I. 



"THEREFORE I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with 

 modification embraces all the members of the same class. 



I believe that animals have descended from at most only 

 four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser 



II umber." 



"Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to 

 the belief that all animals and plants have descended from 

 some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. 

 Nevertheless, all living things have much in common in 

 their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their 

 cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. 

 We see this even in so trifling, a circumstance as that the 

 same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or 

 that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous 

 growths in the wild rose or oak tree. Therefore I should 

 infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which 

 hare ever lived on this earth, have descended from one 

 primordial form into which life was first breathed." 

 DABWIN, on the Origin and Variation of Species, page 483-4. 



THERE can be no doubt about the meaning 

 of the above quotations. They express clearly and 

 with startling confidence the result of Mr. Darwin's 

 investigations into the origin of species. But 

 whatever may be their significance to the philo- 



