9 ("Nature of Limbs", page 86), wrote as follows:
"The archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh under diverse such
modifications, upon this planet, long prior to the existence of those
animal species that actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or
secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic
phenomena may have been committed, we, as yet, are ignorant." In his
address to the British Association, in 1858, he speaks (page li) of "the
axiom of the continuous operation of creative power, or of the ordained
becoming of living things." Further on (page xc), after referring
to geographical distribution, he adds, "These phenomena shake our
confidence in the conclusion that the Apteryx of New Zealand and the
Red Grouse of England were distinct creations in and for those islands
respectively. Always, also, it may be well to bear in mind that by the
word 'creation' the zoologist means 'a process he knows not what.'" He
amplifies this idea by adding that when such cases as that of the Red
Grouse are "enumerated by the zoologist as evidence of distinct creation
of the bird in and for such islands, he chiefly expresses that he
knows not how the Red Grouse came to be there, and there exclusively;
signifying also, by this mode of expressing such ignorance, his belief
that both the bird and the islands owed their origin to a great first
Creative Cause." If we interpret these sentences given in the same
address, one by the other, it appears that this eminent philosopher felt
in 1858 his confidence shaken that the Apteryx and the Red Grouse first
appeared in their respective homes "he knew not how," or by some process
"he knew not what."

This address was delivered after the papers by Mr. Wallace and myself on
the Origin of Species, presently to be referred to, had been read before
the Linnean Society. When the first edition of this work was published,
I was so completely deceived, as were many others, by such expressions
as "the continuous operation of creative power," that I included
Professor Owen with other palaeontologists as being firmly convinced
of the immutability of species; but it appears ("Anat. of Vertebrates",
vol. iii, page 796) that this was on my part a preposterous error. In
the last edition of this work I inferred, and the inference still seems
to me perfectly just, from a passage beginning with the words "no doubt
the type-form," etc.(Ibid., vol. i, page xxxv), that Professor Owen
admit