74 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



together with certain other exceptional modes of develop- 

 ment, have been brought forward. The development of 

 color in certain apes, the hood of the cobra, and the rattle 

 of the rattlesnake, have also been cited. Again, difficulties 

 as to the process of formation of the eye and ear, and as to 

 the fully-developed condition of those complex organs, as 

 well as of the voice, have been considered. The beauty of 

 certain shell-fish ; the wonderful adaptations of structure, and 

 variety of form and resemblance, found in orchids ; together 

 with the complex habits and social conditions of certain 

 ants, have been hastily passed in review. When all these 

 complications are duly weighed and considered, and when 

 it is borne in mind how necessary it is for the permanence 

 of a new variety that many individuals in each case should 

 be simultaneously modified, the cumulative argument seems 

 irresistible. 



The author of this book can say that, though by no 

 means disposed originally to dissent from the theory of 

 " Natural Selection," if only its difficulties could be solved, 

 he has found each successive year that deeper consideration 

 and more careful examination have more and more brought 

 home to him the inadequacy of Mr. Darwin's theory to ac- 

 count for the preservation and intensification of incipient, 

 specific, and generic characters. That minute, fortuitous, 

 and indefinite variations could have brought about such spe- 

 cial forms and modifications as have been enumerated in 

 this chapter, seems to contradict not imagination, but reason. 



That either many individuals among a species of butter- 

 fly should be simultaneously preserved through a similar 

 accidental and minute variation in one definite direction, 

 when variations in many other directions would also pre- 

 serve ; or that one or two so varying should succeed in sup- 

 planting the progeny of thousands of other individuals, and 

 that this should by no other cause be carried so far as to 

 produce the appearance (as we have before stated) of spots 



