ance of the two species be reversed, it follows
that on the special-creation theory the one species must have been
created plentiful, the other rare; and, notwithstanding the many causes
that continually tend to alter the proportions of species, these two
species must have always been specially maintained at their respective
proportions, or the very purpose for which they each received their
peculiar characteristics would have completely failed. A third
difficulty is, that although it is very easy to understand how mimicry
may be brought about by variation and the survival of the fittest, it
seems a very strange thing for a Creator to protect an animal by making
it imitate another, when the very assumption of a Creator implies his
power to create it so as to require no such circuitous protection. These
appear to be fatal objections to the application of the special-creation
theory to this particular case.

The other two supposed explanations, which may be shortly expressed as
the theories of "similar conditions" and of "heredity," agree in making
mimicry, where it exists, an adventitious circumstance not necessarily
connected with the well-being of the mimicking species. But several of
the most striking and most constant facts which have been adduced,
directly contradict both those hypotheses. The law that mimicry is
confined to a few groups only is one of these, for "similar conditions"
must act more or less on all groups in a limited region, and "heredity"
must influence all groups related to each other in an equal degree.
Again, the general fact that those species which mimic others are rare,
while those which are imitated are abundant, is in no way explained by
either of these theories, any more than is the frequent occurrence of
some palpable mode of protection in the imitated species. "Reversion to
an ancestral type" no way explains why the imitator and the imitated
always inhabit the very same district, whereas allied forms of every
degree of nearness and remoteness generally inhabit different countries,
and often different quarters of the globe; and neither it, nor "similar
conditions," will account for the likeness between species of distinct
groups being superficial only--a disguise, not a true resemblance; for
the imitation of bark, of leaves, of sticks, of dung; for the
resemblance between species in different orders, and even different
classes and sub-kingdoms; and finally, for the graduated series of the
p