12 Darwinism Verified. [i. 



wondrous variety of living beings, Mr. Darwin has 

 nowhere asserted or implied, having even in the 

 earliest edition of his great work explicitly pointed 

 out certain other agencies as involved in the complex 

 result. Yet other agencies, hitherto unsuspected, may 

 be discovered in the future ; but such discoveries, how- 

 ever far they may go in supplementing the Darwinian 

 theory, can only strengthen its central position as re- 

 gards the rise of specific differences through gradual 

 modifications. 



That natural selection is a true cause, and one 

 capable of accumulating variations to an indefinite 

 extent, is now held to be beyond question. The 

 wonders wrought by artificial selection in the breed- 

 ing of domestic animals and cultivated plants are 

 such that one might well have attributed great re- 

 sults to the exercise of a similar selection by Nature 

 through countless ages, could any such process be 

 detected. Few, however, save those instructed natu- 

 ralists who have frequent occasion to ponder the 

 subject, are aware what a tremendous reality natural 

 selection is. As I have elsewhere observed " a single 

 codfish has been known to lay six million eggs within 

 a year. If these eggs were all to become adult cod- 

 fishes, and the multiplication were to continue at this 

 rate for three or four years, the ocean would not afford 



