204 S. R. PATTISON, F.G.S. 
to gain a victory, not by the prowess of his own troops, but 
by the alleged weakness of the other side. 
He says :— 
“ However well grounded we admit the theory of selection 
to be, we cannot accept it as in itself sufficient to obtain the 
complicated and involved metamorphoses which have taken 
place in organisms in the course of immeasurable time. If 
the theory of repeated acts of creation be rejected, and the 
process of natural development be established in its place, 
there is still the first appearance of organisms to be accounted 
for, and especially the definite cause which the evolution of 
the complicated and more highly-developed organisms has 
taken to be explained.” * 
He further says:—‘‘It must be admitted that we are 
entirely ignorant of the molecular basis of a living organism, 
and it exists under conditions the nature of which is, as yet, 
unexplained.” + 
This is not, however, a question to be settled by authority ; 
and the fact that the authorities are, as we have seen, clearly 
conflicting, relegates us to the facts themselves. 
So far as we can discover, difference of form is occasioned 
by difference of structure and arrangement in the soft parts, 
so that difference in species may be all traced to permanent 
difference in the tissues of the living animal. 
These differences are manifested from the very first. The 
forms of the Spermatozoa, the very start of individual life, are 
distinctly different in each family. With more perfect vision 
and instruments we should doubtless find differences where 
we now only see similarities, and the vision of identity would 
vanish. It is the same if we trace the nucleus in the egg. 
The peculiar nature, the very essence and character of things 
is in and at their beginnings, 
However development may be promoted by favourable sur- 
roundings, yet the act of the exercise of life is the act of the 
life itself. The faculty in the living coral (whatever it may be 
called) which determines the precise fashion which every 
molecule secreted from the sea-water shall assume, makes it 
to differ from any other form in the world above or below it. 
The influence of environment modifies individuals temporarily, 
but never transforms them. At least, we have no instance of 
any disposal by the creature into an absolutely new form. 
The difficulties of evolution, in this case, seem to be very 
* Claus, vol. 1. p. 179. 
+ Claus’ Elementary Bool: of Zoology, vol.i. p.9 (translated by Sede wick), 
