154 WHAT IS DARWINISM t 



by habits and instincts, furnishes another safe 

 criterion. (3.) Permanent fecundity. The 

 progenitors of the same species reproduce their 

 kind from generation to generation ; the prog- 

 eny of different species, although nearly allied, 

 do not. It is a fixed law of nature that species 

 never can be annihilated, except by all the 

 individuals included in them dying out; and 

 that new species cannot be produced. Every 

 true species is primordial. It is this fact, that 

 is, that no variety, with the essential charac- 

 teristics of species, has ever been produced, 

 that forces, as we saw above, Professor Huxley 

 to pronounce Mr. Darwin's doctrine to be an 

 unproved hypothesis. Species continue ; vari- 

 eties, if let alone, always revert to the normal 

 type. It requires the skill and constant atten- 

 tion of man to keep them distinct. 



Now that there are such forms in nature, is 

 proved not only from the testimony of the 

 great body of the most distinguished natural- 

 ists, but by all the facts in the case. 



First, the fact that such species are known 

 to have existed unchanged, through what ge- 

 ologists consider almost immeasurable periods 

 of time. Palaeontologists tell us that Trilobites 

 abounded from the primordial age down to the 



