II.] INCIPIENT STRUCTURES. 35 



CHAPTER II. 



THE INCOMPETENCY OF "NATURAL SELECTION 



COUNT FOB THE INCIPIENT STAGES OF USEFUL STRUCT- 

 URES. 



Mr. Darwin supposes that Natural Selection acts by Slight Variations. These must be 

 useful at once. Difficulties as to the Giraffe ; as to Mimicry ; as to the Heads of 

 Flat-fishes ; as to the Origin and Constancy of the Vertebrate Limbs ; as to Whale- 

 bone ; as to the Young Kangaroo ; as to Sea-urchins ; as to certain Processes of 

 Metamorphosis ; as to the Mammary -gland ; as to certain Ape Characters ; as to 

 the Kattlesnake and Cobra ; as to the Process of Formation of the Eye and Ear , as 

 to the Fully-developed Condition of the Eye and Ear ; as to the Voice ; as to Shell- 

 fish ; as to Orchids ; as to Ants. the Necessity for the Simultaneous Modification 

 of Many Individuals. Summary and Conclusion. 



" NATURAL Selection," simply and by itself, is potent 

 to explain the maintenance or the further extension and 

 development of favorable variations, which are at once suf- 

 ficiently considerable to be useful from the first to the indi- 

 vidual possessing them. But Natural Selection utterly fails 

 to account for the conservation and development of the 

 minute and rudimentary beginnings, the slight and infini- 

 tesimal commencements of structures, however useful those 

 structures may afterward become. 



Now, it is distinctly enunciated by Mr. Darwin, that the 

 spontaneous variations upon which his theory depends are 

 individually slight, minute, and insensible. He says, 1 

 " Slight individual differences, how r ever, suffice for the 

 work, and are probably the sole differences which are effec- 

 tive in the production of new species." And again, after 



1 "Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., p. 192 



