gone circling on according to fixed laws, and land and water, in a cycle of change, have gone on replacing each other, that from so simple an origin, through the process of gradual selection of infinitesimal changes, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved{184}. {179} The simile of the savage and the ship occurs in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 485, vi. p. 665. {180} In the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 486, vi. p. 665, the author speaks of the "summing up of many contrivances": I have therefore introduced the above words which make the passage clearer. In the _Origin_ the comparison is with "a great mechanical invention,"--not with a work of art. {181} See a similar passage in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 487, vi. p. 667. {182} See the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 488, vi. p. 668. {183} The following discussion, together with some memoranda are on the last page of the MS. "The supposed creative spirit does not create either number or kind which <are> from analogy adapted to site (viz. New Zealand): it does not keep them all permanently adapted to any country,--it works on spots or areas of creation,--it is not persistent for great periods,--it creates forms of same groups in same regions, with no physical similarity,--it creates, on islands or mountain summits, species allied to the neighbouring ones, and not allied to alpine nature as shown in other mountain summits--even different on different island of similarly constituted archipelago, not created on two points: never mammifers created on small isolated island; nor number of organisms adapted to locality: its power seems influenced or related to the range of other species wholly distinct of the same genus,--it does not equally effect, in amount of difference, all the groups of the same class." {184} This passage is the ancestor of the concluding words in the first edition of the _Origin of Species_ which have remained substantially unchanged throughout subsequent editions, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." In the 2nd edition "by the Creator" is introduced after "originally breathed." N.B.--There ought somewhere to be a discussion from Lyell to show that external conditions do vary, or a note to Lyell's works <work?>.