tween more plainly marked varieties and
sub-species and species. On separate continents, and on different parts
of the same continent when divided by barriers of any kind, what a
multitude of forms exist which some experienced naturalists rank as
varieties, others as geographical races or sub-species, and others as
distinct, though closely allied species!

If, then, animals and plants do vary, let it be ever so slightly or
slowly, why should not variations or individuals, differences which are
in any way beneficial, be preserved and accumulated through natural
selection, or the survival of the fittest? If man can, by patience,
select variations useful to him, why, under changing and complex
conditions of life, should not variations useful to Nature's living
products often arise, and be preserved, or selected? What limit can be
put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the
whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature--favouring
the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in
slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations
of life.

In the future I see open fields for far more important researches.
Psychology will be based on the foundation already well laid by Mr.
Herbert Spencer--that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power
and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of
man and his history.

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords
better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator
that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants
of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all
beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system
was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the
past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its
unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to
a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are
grouped shows that the greater number of species in each genus, and all
the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have bec