196 The u Species” War Reopened. [April, 
only what we happen to call distinct species, but also sub- 
breeds and strains still more faintly characterised.” This is 
in some respeCts a novel departure in natural history, exactly 
antipodal to the Evolutionist supposition that all animals are 
ultimately descended from one common stock. Anti-Dar- 
winians contend, con strepitu , that we can produce no evi- 
dence of a gorilla or a mias developing into a man. But 
neither have we on record any well-authenticated instance 
of a white man or woman being born from any pure negro 
stock, or vice versa. So that Mr. Pusey cannot be confuted 
by direct evidence. The believers in the independent origin 
of species who assume that each is the issue of one primor- 
dial pair cannot confute him, for they are incapable of 
accounting for the origin of varieties and races without 
making dangerous admissions. 
To this doCtrine of permanence it is replied by Evolu- 
tionists that the evidence in its support is purely negative. 
No one, perhaps, has seen a novel animal type developed 
from one pre-existing. But no one has seen a new type 
originate in any other way. Yet that different series of 
forms have successively appeared upon the earth appears 
certain. Whence then, and how ? The Evolutionist view, 
however unsupported by direct evidence, seems at any rate 
more conceivable than the equally unsupported view of in- 
dependent origin. For whether is more likely, that an 
existing form should give birth to descendants more or less 
modified, than that new forms should arise out of the earth 
or be condensed from the air ? We may venture to say that 
if any five or ten educated and reputedly truthful men were 
to make affidavit that they had witnessed such an occur- 
rence, they would be simply laughed at, and that by 
believers in independent origination not less than by evo- 
lutionists. Had we the misfortune to witness such an event 
we should conclude ourselves the victim of an illusion, or 
else we should be forced to admit that Science was hence- 
forth an impossibility because Nature was without order. 
And no third alternative can be supposed. Evolution or in- 
dependent origin ; it is Hobson’s choice. In what way 
either is supposed to have been effected does not here come 
into consideration. Mr. Pusey admits that Evolution is 
more conceivable than production in any other way. But 
he seeks to set this admission aside by the following illus- 
tration : — “ It would seem to the eye of a layman (and with 
regard to the origin of life we are all laymen) easier to make 
one salt out of another closely resembling it than out of an 
acid and a base which do not resemble it at all. Yet we 
