RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS. 109 
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are rare and probably dying out, and would cease to 
have any effect should the proportionate abundance of 
the two species be reversed, it follows that on the 
special-creation theory the one species must have been 
created plentiful, the other rare ; and, notwithstanding 
the many causes that continually tend to alter the pro- 
portions of species, these two species must have always 
been specially maintained at their respective propor- 
tions, or the very purpose for which they each received 
their peculiar characteristics would have completely 
failed. A third difficulty is, that although it is very 
easy to understand how mimicry may be brought 
about by variation and the survival of the fittest, it 
seems a very strange thing for a Creator to protect 
an animal by making it imitate another, when the 
very assumption of a Creator implies his power to 
create it so as to require no such circuitous protection. 
These appear to be fatal objections to the application 
of the special-creation theory to this particular case. 
The other two supposed explanations, which may . 
be shortly expressed as the theories of ‘similar con- 
ditions” and of ‘ heredity,” agree in making mimicry, 
where it exists, an adventitious circumstance not ne- 
cessarily connected with the well-being of the mimick- 
ing species. But several of the most striking and 
most constant facts which have been adduced, directly 
contradict both these hypotheses. The law that mi- 
micry is confined to a few groups only is one of these, 
for “similar conditions” must act more or less on all 
groups in a limited region, and “heredity” must 
