1. The advocate of creation is in this matter in no worse position then the evolutionist. This we have already shown, and I may refer here to the fact that Darwin himself assumes at least one primitive form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly just as little able to imagine this one act of creation as any other that may be demanded of him. 2. We are not bound to believe that all groups of individual animals, which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of creation. Man himself has by some naturalists been divided into several species; but we may well be content to believe the creation of one primitive form, and the production of existing races by variation. Every zoologist and botanist who has studied any group of animals or plants with care, knows that there are numerous related forms passing into each other, which some naturalists might consider to be distinct species, but which it is certainly not necessary to regard as distinct products of creation. Every species is more or less variable, and this variability may be developed by different causes. Individuals exposed to unfavourable conditions will be stunted and depauperated; those in more favourable circumstances may be improved and enlarged. Important changes may thus take place without transgressing the limits of the species, or preventing a return to its typical forms; and the practice of confounding these more limited changes with the wider structural and physiological differences which separate true species is much to be deprecated. Animals which pass through metamorphoses, or which, are developed through the instrumentality of intermediate forms or "nurses"[BE] are not only liable to be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they may, tinder certain circumstances, attain to a premature maturity, or may be fixed for a time or permanently in an immature condition. Further, species, like individuals, probably have their infancy, maturity, and decay in geological time, and may present differences in these several stages. It is the remainder of true specific types left after all these sources of error are removed, that creation has to account for; and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its nature and amount, will require a vast expenditure of skilful and conscientious labour. [BE] Mr. Mungo Ponton, in his book "The Beginning," has based a theory of derivation on this peculiarity.