8 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 



rose, the banana and the pine-apple, lose the power of pro- 

 pagation by seed, that is, become virtually sterile, and but for 

 man's care would perish. Domesticated animals and culti- 

 vated plants are, in short, but feeble competitors Avith theu' 

 wild congeners, and ought not to be quoted as profitable 

 mutations, to say nothing of the non-existence of such 

 varieties for the millions of years which preceded man's first 

 appearance, and during which the theory, were it true, must 

 have been in full operation. 



One might have expected that the theory of development 

 by natural selection would, instead of four or five progenitors 

 for animals, and the same, or even a less number for plants, 

 have amounted to a number at least equal to that of their 

 respective natural orders. This would at least have dis- 

 pensed with the necessity which now exists of imagining 

 such violent and seemingly miraculous transitions as, for 

 example, the growth, in due time, of a mushroom into an 

 oak, or of a sponge into a whale. 



The theory makes no pro\ision for disparities of climate, 

 or for the geographical distribution of plants and animals as 

 they now exist, frequently independent of climate. On the 

 contrary, it supposes every plant and animal of land and 

 water to have sprung from eight or ten invisible and inde- 

 scribable progenitors, which in this case must be imagined to 

 achieve distant migrations ; which we know to be impossible 

 to their most fully developed descendants — even to man liim- 

 self until within the last few generations. 



The theory of natural selection by profitable variation of 

 species of course supposes indefinite improvement. For the 

 present, the transmigrations have had their climaxin man ; but 

 if the theory were true, it ought, after the lapse of a period of 

 time equal in length with that which has transpired since a 

 monad became a man, to produce a being t^vice as highly 

 gifted as the existing race of mortals. The theory, however, 

 is supposed to terminate in absolute perfection; but why, if 

 the principle of development be well founded, it should ever end 

 at all, is not explained. What, theii, does absolute perfection 



