ction of natural laws, are at every step self-adjusted to
external conditions by the dying out of all unadjusted forms, and are
therefore stable and comparatively permanent. To be consistent in their
views, our opponents must maintain that every one of the variations that
have rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined
at the right time and place by the will of the Creator. Every race
produced by the florist or the breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier,
the ratcatcher, the sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been
provided for by varieties occurring when wanted; and as these variations
were never withheld, it would prove, that the sanction of an all-wise
and all-powerful Being, has been given to that which the highest human
minds consider to be trivial, mean, or debasing.

This appears to be a complete answer to the theory, that variation
sufficient in amount to be accumulated in a given direction must be the
direct act of the Creative Mind, but it is also sufficiently condemned
by being so entirely unnecessary. The facility with which man obtains
new races, depends chiefly upon the number of individuals he can procure
to select from. When hundreds of florists or breeders are all aiming at
the same object, the work of change goes on rapidly. But a common
species in nature contains a thousand-or a million-fold more individuals
than any domestic race; and survival of the fittest must unerringly
preserve all that vary in the right direction, not only in obvious
characters but in minute details, not only in external but in internal
organs; so that if the materials are sufficient for the needs of man,
there can be no want of them to fulfil the grand purpose of keeping up a
supply of modified organisms, exactly adapted to the changed conditions
that are always occurring in the inorganic world.

_The Objection that there are Limits to Variation._

Having now, I believe, fairly answered the chief objections of the Duke
of Argyll, I proceed to notice one or two of those adduced in an able
and argumentative essay on the "Origin of Species" in the _North British
Review_ for July, 1867. The writer first attempts to prove that there
are strict limits to variation. When we begin to select variations in
any one direction, the process is comparatively rapid, but after a
considerable amount of change has been effected it becomes slower and
slower, till at length its limits are reached and no care in