per on the Coral
Reefs, is indeed a sad warning how far the love of a theory may seduce
even a first-rate naturalist from the very articles of his creed.

This treatment of facts is followed up by another favourite line of
argument, namely, that by this hypothesis difficulties otherwise
inextricable are solved. Such passages abound. Take a few, selected
almost at random, to illustrate what we mean:--

How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation!--p.
436.

Such facts as the presence of peculiar species of bats and the absence
of other mammals on oceanic islands are utterly inexplicable on the
theory of independent acts of creation.--pp. 477-8.

It must be admitted that these facts receive no explanation on the
theory of creation.--p. 478.

The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of
Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand
fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of
independent creation.--pp. 398-9.

Now what can be more simply reconcilable with that theory than Mr.
Darwin's own account of the mode in which the migration of animal life
from one distant region to another is continually accomplished?

Take another of these suggestions:--

It is inexplicable, on the theory of creation, why a part developed in
a very unusual manner in any one species of a genus, and therefore, as
we may naturally infer, of great importance to the species, should be
eminently liable to variation.--p. 474.

Why "inexplicable"? Such a liability to variation might most naturally
be expected in the part "unusually developed," because such unusual
development is of the nature of a monstrosity, and monsters are always
tending to relapse into likeness to the normal type. Yet this argument
is one on which he mainly relies to establish his theory, for he sums
all up in this triumphant inference:--

I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me
that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large
classes of facts above specified.--p. 480.

Now, as to all this, we deny, first, that many of these difficulties are
"inexplicable on any other supposition." Of the greatest of them (128,
194) we shall have to speak before we conclude. We will here touch only
on one of those which are continually reappearing in Mr. Darwin's pages,
in order to illustrate his mode of dealing with t