And there is also one other general objection which I desire to state.

Why should _development_ have gone in different directions _towards the
same object_? I grant that different circumstances would produce
different changes, but not for the same purpose. For example take
eye-sight. The world shows several types of eye. The _insect_ eye quite
unlike any other; the crustacean eye also distinct; and birds, fishes,
and animals having an eye which is generally similar and is somewhat
imitated by the eye of the _cuttle fish_ (which is not a _fish_, but a
_cephalopod_).

Again, granted that _poison_ is a useful defence to creatures: how is it
given so differently?--to a serpent in the tooth; to a bee or a scorpion
in the tail; to a spider in a specially adapted _antenna_, and to the
centipede in a pair of modified legs on the _thorax_.

One would have supposed that natural causes tending to produce poison
weapons would have all gone on the same lines. And, curiously, in some
few cases, we have a sameness of line. About twelve species--all
fish--have an electric apparatus, familiar to most of us in the flat
sea-fish called _Torpedo_ and in the fresh-water eel called _Gymnotus_.
The only answer the anti-creationist can give to this dissimilarity of
development is that there are many vacant places in the polity of
nature, and that development takes place in that direction which fits
the creature to occupy a vacant place, and is, therefore, diverse.

It seems to me that this--the only answer that can he given--is
necessarily a modified form or mode _of creation._ How can _natural
causes_ know anything about a polity of nature and a vacant place, here