III. MIMICRY, AND OTHER PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS.

Against the special creation of mimicking species there are all the objections and difficulties in the way of special creation in other cases, with the addition of a few that are peculiar to it. The most obvious is, that we have gradations of mimicry and of protective resemblance—a fact which is strongly suggestive of a natural process having been at work. Another very serious objection is, that as mimicry has been shown to be useful only to those species and groups which are rare and probably dying out, and would cease to have any effect should the proportionate abundance of the two species be reversed, it follows that on the special-creation theory the one species must have been created plentiful, the other rare; and, notwithstanding the many causes that continually tend to alter the proportions of species, these two species must have always been specially maintained at their respective proportions, or the very purpose for which they each received their peculiar characteristics would have completely failed. A third difficulty is, that although it is very easy to understand how mimicry may be brought about by variation and the survival of the fittest, it seems a very strange thing for a Creator to protect an animal by making it imitate another, when the very assumption of a Creator implies his power to create it so as to require no such circuitous protection. These appear to be fatal