Miscellaneous. 221 
statement of the variability of species so often repeated lately. If 
species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation 
theory maintain, how can they vary? and if individuals alone exist, 
how can the differences which may be observed among them prove 
the variability of species? The fact seems to me to be, that, while 
species are based upon definite relations among individuals which 
differ in various ways among themselves, each individual, as a distinct 
being, has a definite course to run from the time of its first formation 
to the end of its existence, during which it never loses its identity 
nor changes its individuality, nor its relations to other individuals 
belonging to the same species, but preserves all the categories of 
relationship which constitute specific or generic or family affinity, or 
any other kind or degree of affinity. To prove that species vary, it 
should be proved that individuals born from common ancestors change 
the different categories of relationship which they bore primitively 
to one another. While all that has thus far been shown is, that there 
exists a considerable difference among individuals of one and the 
same species. This may be new to those who have looked upon every 
individual picked up at random, as affording the means of describing 
satisfactorily any species ; but no naturalist who has studied carefully 
any of the species now best known can have failed to perceive that 
it requires extensive series of specimens accurately to describe a 
species, and that the more complete such series are, the more precise 
appear the limits which separate species. Surely the aim of science 
cannot be to furnish amateur zoologists or collectors with a recipe for 
a ready identification of any chance specimen that may fall into their 
hands. And the difficulties with which we may meet in attempting 
to characterize species do not afford the least indication that species 
do not exist at all, as long as most of them can be distinguished, as 
such, almost at first sight. I foresee that some convert to the trans- 
mutation creed will at once object that the facility with which species 
may be distinguished is no evidence that they were not derived from 
other species. It may be so. But as long as no fact is adduced to 
show that any one well-known species, among the many thousands 
that are buried in the whole series of fossiliferous rocks, is actually 
the parent of any one of the species now living, such arguments can 
have no weight ; and thus far the supporters of the transmutation 
theory have failed to produce any such facts. Instead of facts we 
are treated with marvellous bear, cuckoo, and other stories. ‘‘ Credat 
Judeeus Apella!”’ 
Had Mr. Darwin or his followers furnished a single fact to show 
that individuals change, in the course of time, in such a manner as 
to produce at last species different from those known before, the state 
of the case might be different. But it stands recorded now, as before, 
that the animals known to the ancients are still in existence, exhibiting 
to this day the characters they exhibited of old. The geological 
record, even with all its imperfections, exaggerated to distortion, tells 
now, what it has told from the beginning, that the supposed inter- 
mediate forms between the species of different geological periods are 
imaginary beings, called up merely in support of a fanciful theory. 
