who were similarly enabled thereby to prevail over their less gifted competitors, and similarly to transmit all their advantages to a posterity, some members of which would similarly be born with certain new advantages in addition. By continual repetition of these processes, and the consequent accumulation of divergencies from the original pattern, however slight those divergencies might separately be, there could not but eventually become formed breeds so distinct from each other as to be to all intents and purposes distinct species, in whichsoever of its many vague senses the term 'species' be understood. Now these species, instead of having been created, would be the result of divergence from their created progenitor. Whether, therefore, any created species do or do not still exist, it is certain that among existing species there are some that were not created, but which have been gradually evolved, and evolved, too, through survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin, then, is fairly entitled to the praise of having placed beyond dispute that a process called by himself 'Natural Selection,' and by Mr. Herbert Spencer 'Survival of the Fittest,' has almost from the commencement of organic life been, and still is, in active operation; that it is a cause which must needs have originated some species, and is quite competent to have originated all that still exist; whereas creation, the only other suggested cause, cannot be conceived to have done this latter unless every minutest shade of difference between offspring and parent be regarded as the effect of a separate creative act. Unless creation have originated every one of those divergencies the accumulation of which constitutes a species, clearly it cannot have originated that species. With some of the phenomena connected with species the theory of creation cannot be reconciled unless this novel interpretation be placed upon the word creation, whereas there are none of the phenomena with which the evolutionary hypothesis conflicts, and few, if any, which, when restricted to its proper office of auxiliary, it will not help to explain.