“The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ would, I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the mistletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptation of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life untouched and unexplained.”

The author of the “Vestiges” did, doubtless, suppose that “Some bird” had given birth to a woodpecker, or more strictly, that a couple of birds had done so—­and this is all that Mr. Darwin has committed himself to—­but no one better knew that these two birds would, according to the author of the “Vestiges,” be just as much woodpeckers, and just as little woodpeckers, as they would be with Mr. Darwin himself.  Mr. Chambers did not suppose that a woodpecker became a woodpecker per saltum though born of some widely different bird, but Mr. Darwin’s words have no application unless they convey this impression.  The reader will note that though the impression is conveyed, Mr. Darwin avoids conveying it categorically.  I suppose this is what Mr. Allen means by saying that he “made all things sure behind him.”  Mr. Chambers did indeed believe in occasional sports; so did Mr. Darwin, and we have seen that in the later editions of the “Origin of Species” he found himself constrained to lay greater stress on these than he had originally done.  Substantially, Mr. Chambers held much the same opinion as to the suddenness or slowness of modification as Mr. Darwin did, nor can it be doubted that Mr. Darwin knew this perfectly well.

What I have said about the woodpecker applies also to the mistletoe.  Besides, it was Mr. Darwin’s business not to presume anything about the matter; his business was to tell us what the author of the “Vestiges” had said, or to refer us to the page of the “Vestiges” on which we should find this.  I suppose he was too busy “collecting, amassing, investigating,” &c., to be at much pains not to misrepresent those who had been in the field before him.  There is no other reference to the “Vestiges” in the “Origin of Species” than this suave but singularly fraudulent passage.

In his edition of 1860 the author of the “Vestiges” showed that he was nettled, and said it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read the “Vestiges” “almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misunderstanding it;” and a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin’s book “in no essential respect contradicts the ‘Vestiges,’” but that, on the contrary, “while adding to its explanations of nature, it expressed the same general ideas.” {216a} This is substantially true; neither Mr. Darwin’s nor Mr. Chambers’s are good books, but the main object of both is to substantiate the theory of descent with modification, and, bad as the “Vestiges” is, it is ingenuous as compared with the “Origin