suddenly flash, but--slowly elaborate themselves into organic structures of some exceedingly simple type; that in the course of ages these simple structures either developed themselves or were developed into structures rendered by slow degrees more and more complex, until the degree of complexity attained, being such as to fit them for being inhabited by spirit previously unembodied, they were, by individualised portions of such spirit, appropriated and inhabited accordingly. Beyond all doubt, at some period or other, what had always previously been unorganised matter must have become organised. Of two things one, then. Either this matter must, whether under superior direction or not, have organised itself, or it must have been organised by some other agency. Mr. Darwin, together with all thorough-going Darwinians, inclines, I suspect, to the opinion that matter organised itself; but if so, it cannot possibly have been inert or lifeless, but must have been active and animate, and capable of volition; and on that condition, there is no great stretch of fancy in imagining it to have spontaneously adopted the series of arrangements indicated. If, on the other hand, we are content to admit that some external superior intelligence may have performed, or conducted, or presided over operations, all room for wonder vanishes. In regard to the character of the structural prototype, that, of course, would depend in part on surrounding physical conditions, and if these have ever been the same in all parts of the globe, there is no apparent reason why any number of specimens of the prototype may not anywhere have been independently elaborated. It is not possible, however, that, since the earth began to revolve round the sun, physical conditions can have been _simultaneously_ the same in all latitudes; while, on the other hand, it seems probable that, although the same set of conditions might perhaps admit of the production of only one organic type, there might be other sets of conditions favourable to the production of other types. On the whole, then, it seems more probable that inorganic matter combined (or _was_ combined) in the first instance in several modes, than in one single mode, in order to become organic. But whatever may have been the organic form or forms it first took, to assume that only a single individual of each form was independently elaborated, and that all other individuals, both of the same form and of all the more complex forms, gradually evolved from that one--are descendants from the same first individual, the same first parent--surely very gratuitously increases the difficulties of the subject. Especially it complicates the problem of the distribution of the same plants and animals over countries immemorially separated by gulfs apparently impassable by natural means.