1J)2 SPECIES NOT 



and in much more confined areas than tin M . 

 would, one have supposed, have been all-sufficient 

 to satisfy the most sceptical doubter of the truth 

 of special creation. Not so Mr. Darwin. With 

 the most labouring and incessant hammering, 

 he knocks his favourite theory through every 

 difficulty. Nothing stops him. The ignis fat mix 

 which he has created, goes on dancing its flick- 

 ering existence through the sloughs and marshes 

 which have swallowed it up a hundred times 

 before. He answers the difficulties of geographical 

 distribution thus: 



1st. We are to make due allowance for our 

 ignorance of all the changes of climate and land- 

 levels, which have occurred during the recent 

 period. 2nd. We are profoundly ignorant with 

 respect to the many and curious means of occa- 

 sional transport. 3rd. A species may have ranged 

 continuously over a wide area, and then have 

 become extinct in the intermediate tracts. 



When these three things are taken into account 

 two expressions of profound ignorance and one 

 of excessive doubt u the difficulties in believing 

 that all the individuals of the same species, 

 irhe/'( : irr located, have descended from the same 

 parents, are not insuperable." (Page 407.) 



Then he goes a step further. 



"Make the same allowances for our ignorances, 

 .and remember that some forms of life change 

 most slowly, enormous periods of time being thus 

 granted for their migration, and I do not think 

 the difficulties are insuperable, to account how, 



