54 INTRODUCTION. 
species ;—at best it can only be said to conserve some among 
those variations which have originated through other causes or 
agencies. When the gardener selects good plants of any favoured 
variety, from which to save seed, he is not originating the variety, 
he is simply conserving it by his care in selecting the parents of 
the next expected generation. The first variation, howsoever 
brought about, begins the new species ; the superadded variations 
being a gradual further mutation of it towards apparent distinct- 
ness, until their accumulation amounts to a difference sufficient to 
place it as an independent species. Natural Selection may rightly 
be said to conserve the first variation,— to conserve the super- 
added variations,— to conserve the accumulation or totality of the 
variations. But, if it does not originate any one of these variations, 
how can it be said to originate the totality of them,— the new 
species ? 
Secondly, the Darwinian theory, as above intimated, is based on 
the hypothetical assumption that variations can and do accumulate 
sufficiently to convert species into species; forming new species 
from old species, by divergences of characters gradually accumu- 
lating until the descendants cease to resemble specifically their 
own remote ancestor. And further still, the theory assumes that 
such divergences can go on in a limitless extent until, not only 
species is changed into other species, but also until genus is 
changed into other genera,—order is changed into other orders,— 
class is changed into other classes. What is there now seen 
adequate to sustain such bold assumptions ? The varietal changes 
hitherto traced and recorded go such an infinitesimally small way 
towards such results, that they cannot be construed into giving 
much support to the likelihood of those results. Is there any 
change now noted, that is really sufficient to warrant the belief 
that (say) a Fern and a Fir-tree, a Moss and a Mushroom, ever 
had the same common ancestor for both ? 
Thirdly, the theory assumes a beginning of organic life in some 
eight or ten types, if not im one only; all the countless species in 
subsequent succession, the extinct and the still existent, having 
hereditarily resulted from those eight or ten original species ; less 
