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Nature's works are. This is a notable discovery, is it not? At 

 all events you will allow that it is worthy of me of me, 

 C. Darwin. I said it before, and I say it again. 



I believe every useful variation is " preserved by the term 

 Natural Selection;" as for instance, that u the swiftest and 

 slimmest wolves would have the best chance of surviving, and so 

 be preserved or selected." You may, if you like, call this a figure 

 of speech, as if one were to say that when a ship is wrecked and 

 a hundred of the crew are drowned out of two hundred, the other 

 hundred are " selected." Well and good. All is well that ends 

 well. Certain animals continue to exist. That is the great 

 dix-overy that I have made. 



I believe that though geology " does not reveal" any traces .of 

 the " missing links" in my chain, which, however, hangs together 

 to my view just as well without them as with them, yet that it 

 ought to have recorded and revealed them, which, in my judgment, 

 comes to exactly the same thing. I love to be particular. 



I believe that " certain forms are supplanted by new ones." 

 True this does away with the belief in the power and wisdom of 

 a CREATOR, but that you will never miss in the terra incognita of 

 my discovery. 



I believe, "I can see no reason to doubt," "that all the various 

 gorgeous tints of birds" (and so, no doubt, in their way, of 

 insects, snakes, and fishes, too) were organised by the admiration 

 of the females for the first " feather in the cap " of this, that, or 

 the other cock bird, her would-be mate. You may ask me how 

 mi this supposition I account for the black colour of the crow, 

 and the dingy hue of the coot. You may ask me how I account 

 for the young birds not having the gay and gaudy colours 

 which they attain afterwards, and why, and how it is that 

 the plumage so totally alters in many birds in winter and summer, 

 and r/tv vend. You may ask me how I account for tlie fact (hat 

 somtf species of birds, as, for example, the crossbills, have every 

 variety of colour in one kind, green, blue, red, orange, yellow, 

 " Mille trahentes varies adverfo so/e (//>. <^ an<l yet no two 

 specimens of them exactly alike. Yes, you may ask me, but 

 rtion reminds me of the poet aiid his suggestion of 



