To compare small things with
great in a homely illustration: man alters from time to time his
instruments or machines, as new circumstances or conditions may
require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and improvements he
adds to the machine he possesses: he adapts a new rig or a new rudder
to an old boat: this answers to _variation_. If boats could engender,
the variations would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic
cattle. In course of time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked;
the best sorts would be chosen for each particular use, and further
improved upon, and so the primordial boat be developed into the scow,
the skiff, the sloop, and other species of water-craft,--the very
diversification, as well as the successive improvements, entailing
the disappearance of many intermediate forms, less adapted to any one
particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of use, and become
extinct species: this is _natural selection_. Now let a great and
important advance be made, like that of steam-navigation: here,
though the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and
therefore the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan:
this may answer to _specific creation_.
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