excellent though short paper ("Bulletins de l'Acad. Roy. Bruxelles", tom.
xiii, page 581) his opinion that it is more probable that new species have
been produced by descent with modification than that they have been
separately created: the author first promulgated this opinion in 1831.

Professor Owen, in 1849 ("Nature of Limbs", page 86), wrote as follows:
"The archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh under diverse such
modifications, upon this planet, long prior to the existence of those
animal species that actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or
secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic
phenomena may have been committed, we, as yet, are ignorant." In his
address to the British Association, in 1858, he speaks (page li) of "the
axiom of the continuous operation of creative power, or of the ordained
becoming of living things." Further on (page xc), after referring to
geographical distribution, he adds, "These phenomena shake our confidence
in the conclusion that the Apteryx of New Zealand and the Red Grouse of
England were distinct creations in and for those islands respectively.
Always, also, it may be well to bear in mind that by the word 'creation'
the zoologist means 'a process he knows not what.'" He amplifies this idea
by adding that when such cases as that of the Red Grouse are "enumerated by
the zoologist as evidence of distinct creation of the bird in and for such
islands, he chiefly expresses that he knows not how the Red Grouse came to
be there, and there exclusively; signifying also, by this mode of
expressing such ignorance, his belief that both the bird and the islands
owed their origin to a great first Creative Cause." If we interpret these
sentences given in the same address, one by the other, it appears that this
eminent philosopher felt in 1858 his confidence shaken that the Apteryx and
the Red Grouse first appeared in their respective homes "he knew not how,"
or by some process "he knew not what."