Another objection, notwithstanding the great stress often laid on it, seems to me to be altogether beside the real issue. It is the one derived from the invariable sterility, real or supposed, of hybrids. A fact cited by Mr. Lewes,[37] that of the fecundity of a cross called _Leporides_, bred by M. Rouy of Angouleme, between the hare and rabbit, of which a thousand on an average were for many years, and probably are still, sent annually to market, would seem to be decisive against the assumed sterility; but, however this be, matters not the least in regard to the efficacy of Natural Selection, which, be it once again observed, is represented as producing new species, not suddenly by the copulation of two old and utterly distinct ones, but very gradually and slowly, by the accumulation of minute differences occurring in successive individuals of the same species. The chief if not the only serious obstacles to acceptance of Darwinism seem to me to be of the author's own creation. Now and then he appears somewhat needlessly to overstrain his principles, as for instance when he intimates his conviction that 'all individuals of the same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera,' will hereafter be discovered to 'have descended from one parent and to have migrated from some one birthplace.' This, to my mind, is much more unlikely than his further suggestion that 'all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype.' Startling as this second proposition may be on first hearing, it may not very improbably express the real fact, provided by 'some one prototype' be signified, not a single individual, but several individuals of one and the same type. Beyond all doubt there was a time when on and about our earth all matter was as yet inorganic, and when whatever spirit,[38] of the sort so termed in contradistinction to matter, either permeated the earth's substance or moved about its surface, must have been as yet unembodied. Mr. Darwin demands whether any one can 'really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history, elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues.' I for one certainly am far from believing this. I see no reason for believing that, whatever other phenomenon, at all similar, may at any stage of the world's progress have occurred, it has at innumerable subsequent stages been repeated; neither do I consider that the phenomenon is likely to have worn the guise of a sudden flash. But I do firmly believe, and am quite unable to substitute any equally plausible substitute for the belief, that when the crust of the earth had sufficiently cooled, and when other physical conditions had become such as to admit of the manifestation of that life which we are accustomed to distinguish by attaching to it the epithet 'organic,' certain of those forces[39] which, in my opinion, constitute matter, did, either of their own accord or under superior direction--not