To my mind there is a genuine pleasure in giving expression to admiration of any great intellectual achievement; and it is much rather for that reason than on account of any value which I imagine my opinion on such a subject can possess, that, having had occasion to name the illustrious author of the 'Origin of Species,' I desire to preface my criticism on what appears to me to be a grave defect in his theory, by intimating my hearty concurrence in its leading principles. That inasmuch as, owing to the exceeding fecundity of the generality of organic beings, more individuals of almost every species are born than can possibly survive, and that consequently a desperate struggle for existence must take place amongst them; that in such a struggle the smallest grain may turn the scale, the minutest advantage possessed by some individuals over others determine which shall live and which shall die; that, as the circumstances in which life is to be maintained change, the character and structure of organisms must change also in order to be accommodated thereto, but that the changes which consequently take place in some individuals are better suited to the altered circumstances than those which take place in other individuals; that individual offspring, moreover, although always strongly resembling their parents in the majority of particulars, always exhibit some slight differences from them; that of these differences such as do not render the offspring less fit will almost of necessity render them more fit for coping with their rivals; and that superior fitness, however acquired, is as likely as any other quality to be transmitted to succeeding generations--all these are indisputable facts, and from these, as premisses, it seems to me not so much to be legitimately deducible that most existing species may have been produced 'by descent, with modification, through natural selection,' or 'survival of the fittest,' as necessarily to follow that they cannot have originated in any other way. For _all_ species to have been created such as they now are, is simply inconsistent with the premisses. Whatever beings may at any remote epoch have been created, there must, according to the conditions involved, have been amongst their descendants some better fitted, by reason of divergence from the parent type, for engaging in internecine strife than those, if any such there were, which adhered closely to that type. Whether, then, among the survivors from the first engagement in that never-ending struggle for life which must have commenced soon after the creation, there were or were not any exact representatives of the parent type, there must have been some exhibiting more or less of divergence from that type. Among the descendants of these, again, there must have been some who, together with the structural or other advantages inherited from their immediate ancestors, possessed, moreover, some advantages first nascent in themselves, and