and minute twigs and scattered leaves is what we have to place in order, and determine the true position each originally occupied with regard to the others, the whole difficulty of the true Natural System of classification becomes apparent to us.

We shall thus find ourselves obliged to reject all those systems of classification which arrange species or groups in circles, as well as those which fix a definite number for the division of each group....  We have ... never been able to find a case in which the circle has been closed by a direct affinity.  In most cases a palpable analogy has been substituted, in others the affinity is very obscure or altogether doubtful....

If we now consider the geographical distribution of animals and plants upon the earth, we shall find all the facts beautifully in accordance with, and readily explained by, the present hypothesis.  A country having species, genera, and whole families peculiar to it will be the necessary result of its having been isolated for a long period, sufficient for many series of species to have been created on the type of pre-existing ones, which, as well as many of the earlier-formed species, have become extinct, and made the groups appear isolated....

Such phenomena as are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America, have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation.  The Galapagos are a volcanic group of high antiquity and have probably never been more closely connected with the continent than they are at present.

He then proceeds at some length to explain how the Galapagos must have been at first “peopled ... by the action of winds and currents,” and that the modified prototypes remaining are the “new species” which have been “created in each on the plan of the pre-existing ones.”  This is followed by a graphic sketch of the general effect of volcanic and other action as affecting the distribution of species, and the exact form in which they are found, even fishes giving “evidence of a similar kind:  each great river [having] its peculiar genera, and in more extensive genera its groups of closely allied species.”

After stating a number of practical examples he continues: 

The question forces itself upon every thinking mind—­Why are these things so?  They could not be as they are, had no law regulated their creation and dispersion.  The law here enunciated not merely explains, but necessitates the facts we see to exist, while the vast and long-continued geological changes of the earth readily account for the exceptions and apparent discrepancies that here and there occur.  The writer’s object in putting forward his views in the present imperfect manner is to submit them to the tests of other minds, and to be made aware of all the facts supposed to be inconsistent with