OB JE C TfONS A GA INS T E VOL UTION. 197 



Why do animals tend to vary? Why do they 

 transmit their characteristics to their offspring? 

 How can chance, irregular, infinitesimal variations, 

 give rise to all the countless species which are known 

 to have existed since the dawn of life, and that 

 within the interval of time which astronomers and 

 physicists are willing to allow? Why, if species 

 have originated by minute, indefinite and irregular 

 variations, are there not more transitional forms 

 than the geological record actually discloses? And 

 how can variations be of any avail in the production 

 of a new species, if these variations, as seems to be 

 the case, are always eliminated by crossing, and if ac- 

 quired characters are not transmitted by inheritance? 

 Why is it that certain features, which are demon- 

 strably useless to the individual, are preserved, and 

 how is it that organs which are useful only when 

 highly developed, could ever have had a beginning? 

 These are but a few of the many questions which 

 might be asked, to which the advocates of natural 

 selection have not as yet given satisfactory an- 

 swers. 



Many attempts, it is true, have been made to 

 overcome the objections against natural selection, 

 but the success of all such attempts is still open to 

 question. Thus, Moritz Wagner, observing that 

 isolation is favorable to the development of varieties, 

 formulated his theory of isolation by migration. To 

 overcome the difficulty embodied in the slow and 

 irregular variations which Darwin postulated, Mivart 

 and others have formulated their theory of extraor- 

 dinary births. They deny the truth of Leibnitz' 



