them, or of any creature, could be exactly alike. The next
generation would give 8,000,000 times as many varieties, and so on till
Natural Selection began to thin off the feeble. But here we have,
instead of a few well-marked varieties, an infinite multitude of
imperceptible variations, rendering classification impossible. And as
all these were only varieties of the same breed, they would breed
together, and thus still more confuse the complexity, and render
distinction of species impossible. For, in spite of all Mr. Darwin has
to say about the extinction of the weaker varieties, the fact is, they
are not at all extinguished, but keep their ground as well as the higher
classes, or perhaps better. And if a snail, or a worm, can contrive to
live now in an unimproved condition, why should its improving cousin die
off? Did its improvement kill it? And so of improving mollusks, and
well-doing radiates, and aspiring rabbits, and all the rest. The world
ought to be so full of them that no man could sort them off into
species, or tell which was fish, which was flesh, and which red herring;
and no pork packer could distinguish hog from dog.

But instead of any such horrible confusion of a world full of mongrels,
we discover a clear and well defined distinction of species, known even
to the poor animals themselves, and by their instincts made known to all
mankind. The Creator, who created all creatures after their kind,
implanted in them an instinct of breeding only with their own species;
and placed a bar in the way of man's vain attempts to work confusion of
species, by rendering the hybrid offspring of different species sterile,
or only capable of breeding back to the pure blood. Innumerable attempts
have been made by fraud and force to procure cross breeds of different
species of plants and animals, but always with the same result--the
extinction of the progeny of the hybrid, unless bred back to nature.
While a mingling of various breeds of the same species--horses, sheep,
or cattle--generally increases fertility, the attempt to mingle
different species, as the horse and the ass, though so similar, always
produces sterile offspring. It is impossible to conceive any form in
which the Creator could more emphatically protest against the attempt to
confuse the distinctions of species He established.

God has fixed a barrier against the mixture or confusion of species by
cross breeding, by ordaining the sterility of hybrids. Mr. D