That the opinion that species have definite though very different limits to their variability is still tenable. That certain fossil transitional forms are absent, which might have been expected to be present. That some facts of geographical distribution supplement other difficulties. That the objection drawn from the physiological difference between "species" and "races" still exists unrefuted. That there are many remarkable phenomena in organic forms upon which "Natural Selection" throws no light whatever, but the explanations of which, if they could be attained, might throw light upon specific origination. [Page 22] Besides these objections to the sufficiency of "Natural Selection," others may be brought against the hypothesis of "Pangenesis," which, professing as it does to explain great difficulties, seems to do so by presenting others not less great--almost to be the explanation of _obscurum per {23} obscurius_. * * * * * CHAPTER II. THE INCOMPETENCY OF "NATURAL SELECTION" TO ACCOUNT FOR THE INCIPIENT STAGES OF USEFUL STRUCTURES. Mr. Darwin supposes that natural selection acts by slight variations.--These must be useful at once.--Difficulties as to the giraffe; as to mimicry; as to the heads of flat-fishes; as to the origin and constancy of the vertebrate limbs; as to whalebone; as to the young kangaroo; as to sea-urchins; as to certain processes of metamorphosis; as to the mammary gland; as to certain ape characters; as to the rattlesnake and cobra; as to the process of formation of the eye and ear; as to the fully developed condition of the eye and ear; as to the voice; as to shell-fish; as to orchids; as to ants.--The necessity for the simultaneous modification of many individuals.--Summary and conclusion. "Natural Selection," simply and by itself, is potent to explain the maintenance or the further extension and development of favourable variations, which are at once sufficiently considerable to be useful from the first to the individual possessing them. But Natural Selection utterly fails to account for the conservation and development of the minute and rudimentary beginnings, the slight and infinitesimal commencements of structures, however useful those structures may afterwards become.