smodic fluttering flight of fancy for the severe conclusions
to which logical accuracy of reasoning has led the way.

Now, the main propositions by which Mr. Darwin's conclusion is attained
are these:--

1. That observed and admitted variations spring up in the course of
descents from a common progenitor.

2. That many of these variations tend to an improvement upon the parent
stock.

3. That, by a continued selection of these improved specimens as the
progenitors of future stock, its powers may be unlimitedly increased.

4. And, lastly, that there is in nature a power continually and
universally working out this selection, and so fixing and augmenting
these improvements.

Mr. Darwin's whole theory rests upon the truth of these propositions and
crumbles utterly away if only one of them fail him. These, therefore, we
must closely scrutinise. We will begin with the last in our series, both
because we think it the newest and the most ingenious part of Mr.
Darwin's whole argument, and also because, whilst we absolutely deny the
mode in which he seeks to apply the existence of the power to help him
in his argument, yet we think that he throws great and very interesting
light upon the fact that such self-acting power does actively and
continuously work in all creation around us.

Mr. Darwin finds then the disseminating and improving power, which he
needs to account for the development of new forms in nature, in the
principle of "Natural Selection," which is evolved in the strife for
room to live and flourish which is evermore maintained between
themselves by all living things. One of the most interesting parts of
Mr. Darwin's volume is that in which he establishes this law of natural
selection; we say establishes, because--repeating that we differ from
him totally in the limits which he would assign to its action--we have
no doubt of the existence or of the importance of the law itself.

* * * * *

We come then to these conclusions. All the facts presented to us in the
natural world tend to show that none of the variations produced in the
fixed forms of animal life, when seen in its most plastic condition
under domestication, give any promise of a true transmutation of
species; first, from the difficulty of accumulating and fixing
variations within the same species; secondly, from the fact that these
variations, though most serviceable for man, have no tendency to improve
the individu