Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created.

This seems to me a strange conclusion to arrive at.

They admit that a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were special creations, and which are still thus looked at by the majority of naturalists, and which consequently have all the external characteristic features of true species--they admit that these have been produced by variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and slightly different forms.

Nevertheless, they do not pretend that they can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws.

They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases.

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