284 Proceedings of the Bo7jal Society 
its unity in variety ? I am not now seeking to answer this question 
in the negative. All I say is, that the physical laws which are 
made subservient to this purpose are entirely unknown to us. That 
particular combination of a great many natural laws, which Mr 
Darwin groups under the name of Natural Selection, does notin the 
least answer the conditions which we seek in a law to account for 
either the origin or the spread of such creatures as the various 
kinds of Humming-birds. On the other hand, if I am asked whether 
I believe that every separate species has been a separate creation 
— not born, but separately made — I must answer, that I do not 
believe it. I think the facts do suggest to the mind the idea of 
the working of some creative law, almost as certainly as they con- 
vince us that we know nothing of its nature, or of the conditions 
under which it does its glorious work. Our experience of the 
existing order of nature is, that the young of each species repeat 
the form and the colours of their parent, and that even where 
variations occur, they are inconstant, and tend to disappear. We 
have no knowledge, for example, that from the eggs of the Blue- 
tailed Sylph a pair of Green-tailed Sylphs can ever be produced. 
We have no reason to believe that a species of “ Lophornis,” with a 
tippet of emerald spangles, can ever hatch out a pair of young 
adorned with spangles of some other gem. And yet we cannot 
assert that such phenomena are impossible, nor can it be denied 
that, as a matter of speculation, this process is natural and easy 
of conception, as compared with the idea of each species being 
separately called into existence, out of the inorganic elements of 
which its body is composed. Such new births — if they do take 
place— would perfectly fulfil, I think, the only idea we can ever form 
of new creations. For example, it would appear that every variety 
which is to take its place as a new species must be born male and 
female ; because it is one of the facts of specific variation in the 
Humming-birds, that although the male and female plumage is 
generally entirely different, yet the female of each species is as 
distinct from the female of every other, as the male is from the 
male of every other. If therefore, each new variety were not born 
in couples, and if the divergence of form were not thus secured in 
the organisation of both the sexes, it would fail to be established, 
or would exhibit for a time the phenomena of mixture, and termi- 
