_Summing up this Division._ If variation be admitted to occur occasionally in some wild animals, and how can we doubt it, when we see [all] thousands <of> organisms, for whatever use taken by man, do vary. If we admit such variations tend to be hereditary, and how can we doubt it when we <remember> resemblances of features and character,--disease and monstrosities inherited and endless races produced (1200 cabbages). If we admit selection is steadily at work, and who will doubt it, when he considers amount of food on an average fixed and reproductive powers act in geometrical ratio. If we admit that external conditions vary, as all geology proclaims, they have done and are now doing,--then, if no law of nature be opposed, there must occasionally be formed races, [slightly] differing from the parent races. So then any such law{102}, none is known, but in all works it is assumed, in <?> flat contradiction to all known facts, that the amount of possible variation is soon acquired. Are not all the most varied species, the oldest domesticated: who <would> think that horses or corn could be produced? Take dahlia and potato, who will pretend in 5000 years{103} <that great changes might not be effected>: perfectly adapted to conditions and then again brought into varying conditions. Think what has been done in few last years, look at pigeons, and cattle. With the amount of food man can produce he may have arrived at limit of fatness or size, or thickness of wool <?>, but these are the most trivial points, but even in these I conclude it is impossible to say we know the limit of variation. And therefore with the [adapting] selecting power of nature, infinitely wise compared to those of man, <I conclude> that it is impossible to say we know the limit of races, which would be true <to their> kind; if of different constitutions would probably be infertile one with another, and which might be adapted in the most singular and admirable manner, according to their wants, to external nature and to other surrounding organisms,--such races would be species. But is there any evidence <that> species <have> been thus produced, this is a question wholly independent of all previous points, and which on examination of the kingdom of nature <we> ought to answer one way or another. {102} I should interpret this obscure sentence as follows, "No such opposing law is known, but in all works on the subject a law is (in flat contradiction to all known facts) assumed to limit the possible amount of variation." In the _Origin_, the author never limits the power of variation, as far as I know. {103} In _Var. under Dom._ Ed. 2, ii. p. 263, the _Dahlia_ is described as showing sensitiveness to conditions in 1841. All the varieties of the _Dahlia_ are said to have arisen since 1804 (_ibid._ i. p. 393). PART II{104}.