According to nature of new conditions, so we might expect all or majority of organisms born under them to vary in some definite way. Further we might expect that the mould in which they are cast would likewise vary in some small degree. But is there any means of selecting those offspring which vary in the same manner, crossing them and keeping their offspring separate and thus producing selected races: otherwise as the wild animals freely cross, so must such small heterogeneous varieties be constantly counter-balanced and lost, and a uniformity of character [kept up] preserved. The former variation as the direct and necessary effects of causes, which we can see can act on them, as size of body from amount of food, effect of certain kinds of food on certain parts of bodies &c. &c.; such new varieties may then become adapted to those external [natural] agencies which act on them. But can varieties be produced adapted to end, which cannot possibly influence their structure and which it is absurd to look <at> as effects of chance. Can varieties like some vars of domesticated animals, like almost all wild species be produced adapted by exquisite means to prey on one animal or to escape from another,--or rather, as it puts out of question effects of intelligence and habits, can a plant become adapted to animals, as a plant which cannot be impregnated without agency of insect; or hooked seeds depending on animal's existence: woolly animals cannot have any direct effect on seeds of plant. This point which all theories about climate adapting woodpecker{50} to crawl <?> up trees, <illegible> miseltoe, <sentence incomplete>. But if every part of a plant or animal was to vary <illegible>, and if a being infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator) during thousands and thousands of years were to select all the variations which tended towards certain ends ([or were to produce causes <?> which tended to the same end]), for instance, if he foresaw a canine animal would be better off, owing to the country producing more hares, if he were longer legged and keener sight,--greyhound produced{51}. If he saw that aquatic <animal would need> skinned toes. If for some unknown cause he found it would advantage a plant, which <?> like most plants is occasionally visited by bees &c.: if that plant's seed were occasionally eaten by birds and were then carried on to rotten trees, he might select trees with fruit more agreeable to such birds as perched, to ensure their being carried to trees; if he perceived those birds more often dropped the seeds, he might well have selected a bird who would <illegible> rotten trees or [gradually select plants which <he> had proved to live on less and less rotten trees]. Who, seeing how plants vary in garden, what blind foolish man has done{52} in a few years, will deny an all-seeing being in thousands of years could effect (if the Creator chose to do so), either