Mr. Darwin continues: “As some rude resemblance is necessary for the first start,” &c.; and a little lower he writes: “Assuming that an insect originally happened to resemble in some degree a dead twig or a decayed leaf, and that it varied slightly in many ways, then all the variations which rendered the insect at all more like any such object, and thus favoured its escape, would be preserved, while other variations would be neglected, and ultimately lost, or if they rendered the insect at all less like the imitated object, they would be eliminated.” But here, again, we are required to begin with Natural Selection when the work is already in great part done, owing to causes about which we are left completely in the dark; we may, I think, fairly demur to the insects _originally_ happening to resemble in some degree a dead twig or a decayed leaf. And when we bear in mind that the variations, being supposed by Mr. Darwin to be indefinite, or devoid of aim, will appear in every direction, we cannot forget what Mr. Mivart insists upon, namely, that the chances of many favourable variations being counteracted by other unfavourable ones in the same creature are not inconsiderable. Nor, again, is it likely that the favourable variation would make its mark upon the race, and escape being absorbed in the course of a few generations, unless—as Mr. Mivart elsewhere points out, in a passage to which I shall call the reader’s attention presently—a larger number of similarly varying creatures made their appearance at the same time than there seems sufficient reason to anticipate, if the variations can be called fortuitous. “There would,” continues Mr. Darwin, “indeed be force in Mr. Mivart’s objection if we were to attempt to account for the above resemblances, independently of ‘natural selection,’ through mere fluctuating variability; but as the case stands, there is none.”