On the theory of sudden creation, how can we account in any but an arbitrary manner, for the innumerable cases in which slight differences separate various species; for the confused neutral ground between different classes, as where, for example, a creature seems half animal half plant; for the isolation of many forms from the stations they are admirably fitted to occupy; for the fact that many creatures are hideous, weak, timid, violent, and venomous; for the imperfection of an instinct in one species found perfected in another, which Mr. Darwin exemplifies by comparing the cells of the humble-bee, the _melipona domestica_ of Mexico, and the hive-bee, ranging from great simplicity to an extreme perfection[13]? But the principle of natural selection offers a solution to every one of these enigmas. It embraces all the various phases of life of the ancient world as well as the modern, and gives a key to the whole grand uninterrupted plan. It carries back the mind to a period when the earth was destitute of life; when yet, as it were, the thought in the Divine mind was still unspoken, that of one, and that as good as dead, should spring seed like the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude. Then it came to pass that the dust of the earth was called into life by the Life-Giver, and received the strange command and the mysterious power to multiply, and to replenish the earth. As soon as living creatures multiplied to any great extent, they would spread themselves into different lands and seas and climates; they would find different sources of nourishment, and then variation would come into play, and close upon variation would follow selection, not of necessity destroying the old forms, but establishing new ones, because in some stations the form that had not varied might thrive best, in others the variety would have an advantage[14]. As time went on, through the constant changes that the surface of the globe is undergoing, one variety would be isolated from another, and in such an isolation the differences would increase. And the more a species varied, the more fitted it might become for some _habitat_, from which it was completely cut off by a chain of mountains, a rapid river, or a deep sea. As the competition became more intense, variations would become more and more valuable, enabling creatures to occupy positions before untenable, ocean-depths, sandy shores, holes in rocks, fresh-water lakes, tops of mountains, branches of trees, the bodies of other living beings. Some would be taught by necessity and enabled by favourable variations to prey, as well as take up their abode, on other creatures. And as the strife became more and more urgent, all sorts of qualities that from our point of view may seem noxious and degrading might prove of the highest service and advantage to their own possessors. Plants with sharp thorns and envenomed hairs, poisonous snakes, trichinæ and other parasites horrible to man, would find their