How can we fail to see the bearings of these facts on the doctrine of
the transformation of species among ordinary plants and animals, which
are merely isolated and self-contained groups of cells? Do not these
facts constitute strong presumptive evidence that among animals and
plants, though there may be variation in plenty within certain limits,
perhaps within even much wider limits than used to be thought possible,
yet among these distinct organisms, little and big, new forms develop
only after their ancestral type, in full accord with the record given in
the first chapter of the Bible?
But we are now prepared to examine in more detail the facts as now known
to modern science regarding "species" of plants and animals.
V