190 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose may be 

 said to have become almost rudimentary in function, though 

 not in structure. In the frigate-bird, the deeply scooped 

 membrane between the toes shows that structure has begun 

 to change. 



He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of cre- 

 ation may say, that in these cases it has pleased the Creator 

 to cause a being of one type to take the place of one belonging 

 to another type ; but this seems to me only re-stating the fact 

 in dignified language. He who believes in the struggle for 

 existence and in the principle of natural selection, will ac- 

 knowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavour- 

 ing to increase in numbers ; and that if any one being varies 

 ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus gains an 

 advantage over some other inhabitant of the same country, it 

 will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different 

 that may be from its own place. Hence it will cause him no 

 surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with 

 webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on 

 the water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in 

 meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be wood- 

 peckers where hardly a tree grows ; that there should be div- 

 ing thrushes and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the 

 habits of auks. 



ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION. 



To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances 

 for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting 

 different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical 

 and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural 

 selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest de- 

 gree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the 

 world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared 

 the doctrine false ; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, 

 as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. 

 Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple 

 and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown 

 to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is cer- 

 tainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the van- 



