CREATION BY LAW. 297 
their bill) to be ducks, and attain a maazimum of 
danger in the condition in which they begin to be 
gulls; and ages. must elapse and whole generations 
must perish, and countless generations of the one 
species be created and sacrificed, to arrive at one 
single pair of the other.” 
In this passage the theory of natural selection is 
so absurdly misrepresented that it would be amusing, 
did we not consider the misleading effect likely to 
be produced by this kind of teaching in so popular 
a journal. It is assumed that the duck and the gull 
are essential parts of nature, each well fitted for its 
place, and that if one had been produced from the 
other by a gradual metamorphosis, the intermediate 
forms would have been useless, unmeaning, and un- 
fitted for any place, in the system of the universe. 
Now, this idea can only exist in a mind ignorant 
of the very foundation and essence of the theory of 
natural selection, which is, the preservation of useful 
variations only, or, as has been well expressed, in 
other words, the ‘survival of the fittest.” Hvery 
intermediate form which could possibly have arisen 
during the transition from the duck to the gull, so 
far from having an unusually severe battle to fight 
for existence, or incurring any “ maximum of danger,” 
would necessarily have been as accurately adjusted 
to the rest of nature, and as well fitted to maintain 
and to enjoy its existence, as the duck or the gull 
actually are. If it were not so, it never could have 
been produced under the law of natural selection. 
