it has attained, and the
imperfect state in which we and our fathers before us had long known it.

'Why, however, since, according to the theory of Natural Selection, an
interminable number of intermediate forms must have existed, linking
together all the species in each group by gradations as fine as are our
present varieties--why do we not see these linking forms all around us?'
To this objection the very theory against which it is urged affords a
partial and almost adequate reply, the deficiencies of which are
besides to some extent supplied by embryology and geology, and to a
farther extent accounted for by the meagreness of the geological record.
Natural selection for survival necessarily implies extinction of all
that are not selected to survive, so that fossil remains are now the
only procurable evidence that any of these latter that have long been
extinct ever existed. But very many organic beings are incapable of
being preserved in a fossil condition, while of those which can be so
preserved 'the number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as
nothing compared with the countless generations of countless species
that must have existed.' It should be recollected, too, that among still
existing forms are to be included several which result from uterine
transformation, and are never found alive except _in utero_.

Another objection, notwithstanding the great stress often laid on it,
seems to me to be altogether beside the real issue. It is the one
derived from the invariable sterility, real or supposed, of hybrids. A
fact cited by Mr. Lewes,[37] that of the fecundity of a cross called
_Leporides_, bred by M. Rouy of Angouleme, between the hare and rabbit,
of which a thousand on an average were for many years, and probably are
still, sent annually to market, would seem to be decisive against the
assumed sterility; but, however this be, matters not the least in regard
to the efficacy of Natural Selection, which, be it once again observed,
is represented as producing new species, not suddenly by the copulation
of two old and utterly distinct ones, but very gradually and slowly, by
the accumulation of minute differences occurring in successive
individuals of the same species.

The chief if not the only serious obstacles to acceptance of Darwinism
seem to me to be of the author's own creation. Now and then he appears
somewhat needlessly to overstrain his principles, as for instance when
he intimates his convic