s; not
cocoa-nuts nor acorns; not even eggs of shell-fish and corals; but only
those of the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life. Therefore, since
it is proved that, from a very remote epoch of geological time, the earth
has been peopled by a continual succession of the higher forms of animals
and plants, these either must have been created, or they have arisen by
evolution. And in respect of certain groups of animals, the well-
established facts of paleontology leave no rational doubt that they arose
by the latter method.

In the second place, there are no data whatever, which justify the
biologist in assigning any, even approximately definite, period of time,
either long or short, to the evolution of one species from another by the
process of variation and selection. In the ninth of the following essays,
I have taken pains to prove that the change of animals has gone on at
very different rates in different groups of living beings; that some
types have persisted with little change from the paleozoic epoch till
now, while others have changed rapidly within the limits of an epoch. In
1862 (see below p. 303, 304) in 1863 (vol. II., p. 461) and again in 1864
(ibid., p. 89-91) I argued, not as a matter of speculation, but, from
paleontological facts, the bearing of which I believe, up to that time,
had not been shown, that any adequate hypothesis of the causes of
evolution must be consistent with progression, stationariness and
retrogression, of the same type at different epochs; of different types
in the same epoch; and that Darwin's hypothesis fulfilled these
conditions.

According to that hypothesis, two factors are at work, variation and
selection. Next to nothing is known of the causes of the former process;
nothing whatever of the time required for the production of a certain
amount of deviation from the existing type. And, as respects selection,
which operates by extinguishing all but a small minority of variations,
we have not the slightest means of estimating the rapidity with which it
does its work. All that we are justified in saying is that the rate at
which it takes place may vary almost indefinitely. If the famous paint-
root of Florida, which kills white pigs but not black ones, were abundant
and certain in its action, black pigs might be substituted for white in
the course of two or three years. If, on the other hand, it was rare and
uncertain in action, the white pigs might linger on for centuries.