COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



fitted for the comfortable maintenance respec- 

 tively of edentata and of marsupials. Stubborn 

 facts, however, are opposed to this theory of 

 the methods of Divine working. The assump- 

 tion that each species is best adapted to its own 

 habitat is refuted by such facts as the now 

 rapidly progressing extermination of native ani- 

 mals and plants in New Zealand by European 

 organisms lately carried there. Cow-grass, this- 

 tles, dock, and white clover flourish more vig- 

 orously in New Zealand than in England, and 

 within a few years have almost displaced the 

 native grasses ; while the native rats and flies 

 are fast disappearing before the rats and flies 

 imported from Europe. The assumption is 

 still more strikingly refuted by a comparison of 

 the forms of life which inhabit Australia with 

 those which inhabit the southern extremities of 

 Africa and South America. These three tracts 

 of land are very similar in their physical condi- 

 tions, and yet, as Mr. Darwin has observed, it 

 would be impossible to point out three faunas 

 and floras more strikingly dissimilar. If the dis- 

 tribution of organisms were miraculously deter- 

 mined in accordance with their fitness to their 

 surrounding conditions, the fauna of South 

 America in latitude 35 ought to resemble the 

 fauna of Australia in the same latitude more 

 closely than it resembles the fauna of South 

 America in latitudes north of 25 . The case is 

 406 



