424 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



shows in each suh-division multitudinous forms which, though 

 unlike enough to be classed as specifically distinct, diverge 

 from one another only in small details which have no signifi- 

 cance in relation to the life led. Sometimes the number of 

 specific distinctions is so great that did they result from 

 human agency we should call them whimsical. 



For example, in Lake Baikal are found 115 species of an 

 amphipod, Gammarus ; and the multiplicity becomes start- 

 ling on learning that this number exceeds the number of all 

 other species of the genus : various as are the conditions to 

 which, throughout the rest of the world, the genus is subject. 

 Still stranger seems the superfluous exercise of power on 

 examining the carpet of living forms at the bottom of the 

 ocean. Xot dwelling on the immense variety of creatures 

 unlike in type which live miles below the surface in absolute 

 darkness, it will suffice to instance the Polyzoa alone: low 

 types of animals so small that a thousand of them would 

 not cover a square inch, and on which, nevertheless, there has 

 been, according to the view we are considering, an exercise 

 of creative skill such that by small variations of structure 

 more than 350 species have been produced ! 



Kindred illustrations are furnished by the fauna of caverns. 

 Are we to suppose that numerous blind creatures — crusta- 

 ceans, myriapods, spiders, insects, fishes — were specially made 

 sightless to fit them for the Mammoth Cave? Or what shall 

 we say of the Proteus, a low amphibian with rudimentary 

 eyes, which inhabits certain caves in Carniola, Carinthia and 

 Dalmatia and is not found elsewhere. Must we conclude that 

 God went out of his way to devise an animal for these places ? 



More puzzling still is a problem presented to the special- 

 creationist by a batrachian inhabiting Central Australia. In 

 a region once peopled by numerous animals but noAV made 

 unfit by continuous droughts, there exists a frog which, when 

 the pools are drying up, fills itself with water and burrowing 

 in the mud hibernates until the next rains ; which may come 

 in a year or may be delayed for two years. What is to be 



