Darwin has adduced very good evidence to show that large areas, notwithstanding the disadvantages which (on his theory) must arise from free intercrossing, are what he terms better manufactories of species than smaller areas, such as oceanic islands. On the other hand, as a matter of fact, oceanic islands are comparatively rich in peculiar species. These two statements, however, are not incompatible. Smaller areas are, as a rule, rich in peculiar species relatively to the number of their inhabitants; but it does not follow that they are rich in species as contrasted with larger areas containing very many more inhabitants. Therefore, the rules are that large areas turn out an absolutely greater number of specific types than small areas; although, relatively to the number of individuals or amount of population, the small areas turn out a larger number of species than the large areas. Now, these two complementary rules admit of being explained as Darwin explains them. Small and isolated areas are rich in species relatively to the amount of population, because, as we have before seen, this population has been permitted to develop an independent history of its own, shielded from intercrossing with parent forms, and from competition with exotic forms; while, at the same time, the homogamy thus secured, combined with change of environment, will give natural selection an improved chance of finding new points of departure for its operation. On the other hand, large and continuous areas are favourable to the production of numerous species, first, because they contain a large population, thus favouring the occurrence of numerous variations; and, secondly, because the large area furnishes a diversity of conditions in its different parts, as to food, climate, attitude, &c., and thus so many different opportunities for the occurrence of sundry forms of homogamy. Now, it is obvious that of all these sundry forms of homogamy, physiological selection must have what may be termed a first-rate opportunity of assisting in the manufacture of species on large areas. For not only is it upon large and continuous areas that the antagonistic effects of intercrossing are most pronounced (and, therefore, that the influence of physiological selection must be most useful in the work of species-making); but here also the diversity in the external conditions of life, which the large area supplies to different parts of the extensive population, cannot fail to furnish physiological selection with a greater abundance of that particular variation in the reproductive system on which its action depends. Again, and of still more importance, on large areas there are a greater _number_ of species already differentiated from one another as such; thus a greater number of already sexually differentiated forms are presented for further differentiation at the hands of physiological selection. For all these reasons, therefore, we might have expected, upon the new theory, that