Buffon would have seen no more reason to Mr. Darwin, when naturalist on board H.M.S. doubt that thesc causes, in a thousand gen- Beagle, " to throw some light on the origin erations, would produce a marked effect, and of species." * But the close resemblance of adapt the form of the wild man to obtain the style, and of the tone and frame of mind fruits rather than grains, than Darwin now which could see no difficulty in the adequacy believes that man can be improved by selec-of the above-cited circumstances of "extertion and careful interbreeding into a higher, nal conditions, of habit, of volition," to change more heroic, more angelic form! The ad- a bear into a whale, to those exemplified in vocate of Buffon's hypothesis might point the "Philosophie Zoologique," point strongly out that it is on islands, as Borneo and Sum-to the writings of Lamarck as the true sugatra, for example, where the orang-utan-gester of Mr. Darwin's views of animated the obvious result of such "degradation by nature. We look, however, in vain for any natural selection"-is exclusively found. instance of hypothetical transmutation in And is it not there also, and in some other Lamarck so gross as the one above cited; islands of the Malayan Archipelago, where we must descend to older illustrators of the the next step in the scale of "degeneration" favorite idea, to find an equivalent case of is exhibited in the still longer-armed Ungkas the bear in pursuit of water-insects, and we and other tail-less Hylobates? And though find one in the following:we call them "tail-less" yet they have the "os coccygis;" and this being a terminal appendage of stunted vertebræ, offers the very condition for the manifestation of an occasional developmental variety. If cats, after accidental mutilation or malformation, can propagate a tail-less breed, why may not apes produce a tailed variety, and by natural selection in a long course of ages, degenerate into endless incipient species of "baboons and monkeys?" sons aîlés et volans chassant ou étant chassés "Car il peut arriver, comme nous sçavons qu'en effet il arrive assez souvent, que les poisdans la mer, emportés du desir de la proie ou de la crainte de la mort, ou bien poussés peutêtre à quelques pas du rivage par des vagues qu'excitoit une tempête, soient tombés dans des roseaux ou dans des herbages, d'où ensuite il ne leur fut pas possible de reprendre vers la mer l'essor qui les en avoit tirés, et qu'en cet état ils ayent contracté une plus grande faculté de voler. But Mr. Darwin, it may be said, repudi- Alors leurs nageoires n'étant plus baignées des ates the coarse transmutational conditions caux de la mer, se fendirent et se déjettèrent par and operations of Buffon and Lamarck; or, la sécheresse. Tandis qu'ils trouvèrent dans les if there be any parallel between his and Buf- roseaux et les herbages dans lesquels ils étoient tombés, quelques alimens pour se soutenir, les fon's illustration of the changing of species, tuyaux de leurs nageoires, séparés les uns des at all events such parallels must run in oppo-autres, se prolongèrent et se revêtirent de barbes; site directions. ou, pour parler plus juste, les membranes qui Mr. Darwin starts from a single created pro- auparavant les avoient tenus collés les uns aux totype, from which it is difficult to conceive autres se métamorphosèrent. La barbe formée he can mean any other course of organic de ces pellicules déjctées s'allongea elle-même; progress than an ascensive one. But of this, la peau de ces animaux se revêtit insensiblement in the absence of a definition of the starting d'un duvet de la même couleur dont elle étoit point, we cannot be perfectly sure. Natu-peinte, et te duvet grandit. Les petits ailerons ral selection" may operate in both directions. qu'ils avoient sous le ventre, et qui comme leurs nageoires, leur avoient aidé à se promener dans The following, for example, would have been la mer, devinrent des pieds, et leur servirent à cordially welcomed by Buffon as a testimony marcher sur la terre. Il se fit encore d'autres in favor of his "dégénération" hypothesis:- petits changemens dans leur figure. Le bec et "In North America the black bear was seen le col des uns s'allongèrent; ceux des autres se by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open racourçirent: il en fut de même du reste du mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the corps. Cependant la conformité de la première water. Even in so extreme a caso as this, if the figure subsiste dans lo total; et elle est et sera supply of insects were constant, and if better toujours aisée à reconnoître. adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale." * "Examinez en effet toutes les espèces de poules, grosses et petites, même celles des Indes, celles qui sont huppées, ou celles qui ne le sont pas; celles dont les plumes sont à rebours telles qu'on en voit à Damiette, c'est-à-dire, dont le plumage est couché de la queue à la tête; vous trouverez re-leuses ou sans écailles. Toutes les espèces de dans la mer des espèces toutes semblables, écailperroquets dont les plumages sont si divers, les oiseaux les plus rares et les plus singulièrement marquetés sont conformes à des poissons peints, comme eux, de noir, de brun, de gris, de jauno, *Darwin, p. 1. *(1st edition.) If the ursine species had not been stricted to northern latitudes, we might have surmised this to have been one of the facts connected with "the distribution of the inhabitants of South America," which seemed to *Darwin, p. 184. (1st edition.) de verd, de rouge, de violet, de couleur d'or et d'azur; et cela précisément dans les mêmes parties où les plumages do ces mêmes oiseaux sont diversifiés d'une manière si bizarre."* ural selection," then, according to the rate of modification experimentally proved in pigeons, we ought to find evidence of progressive increase in the combative qualities of Demaillet, it must be admitted, enters antlers in those deer that for centuries have more fully into the details of the operation still more so in those that have fought and been under observation in our parks, and of "natural selection," in changing the fish into the bird; and it is, perhaps, from this bred from the earliest historical times in the very "naïveté" in the exposition of his theory, mountain wilds of Scotland. The element that its weakness has been made so obvious of "natural selection," above illustrated, to later zoologists and comparative anato- either is, or is not, a law of nature. If it be mists. Mr. Darwin rarely shows a fair front one, the results should be forthcoming; more to these searching tests; the facts of the manespecially in those exceptional cases in which ner of transmutation, as they might have nature herself has superadded structures, as sented themselves to his fancy, are not stated it were, expressly to illustrate the consewith the "abandon" of the old French Phi- quences of such "general struggle for the losopher. Vague and general as is the illus-life of the individual and the continuance of tration based upon Hearne's remark, it is made still more vague in a later reprint of the volume "On the Origin of Species." It now reads, "In North America, the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely opened mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects in the water." (Ed. 1860, p. 184.) pre the race." The antlers of deer are expressly given to the male, and permitted to him, in fighting trim, only at the combative sexual season; they fall and are renewed annually; they belong, moreover, to the most plastic and variable parts or appendages of the quadruped. Is it, then, a fact that the fallow-deer propagated under these influences in Wind"Individuals, it is said, of every species, sor Forest, since the reign of William Rufus, in a state of nature, annually perish," and now manifest in the superior condition of "the survivors will be, for the most part, kind of change which the successions of the antlers, as weapons, that amount and those of the strongest constitutions and the best adapted to provide for themselves and generations under the influence of "natural offspring, under the circumstances in which selection" ought to have produced? Do the they exist." Now, let us test the applica-crowned antlers of the red deer of the ninebility of this postulate to the gradual mutation of a specific form by some instance in Natural History eminently favorable for the assumed results. In many species, nature has superadded to general health and strength, particular weapons and combative instincts, which, as, e. g., in the deer-tribe, insure to the strongest, to the longest-winded, the largest-antlered, and the sharpest-snagged stags, the choice of the hinds and the chief share in the propagation of the next generation. In such peculiarly gifted species we have the most favorable conditions for test ing one of the conclusions drawn by Messrs. Darwin and Wallace from this universally recognized "struggle for the preservation of life and kind." If the offspring, inheriting the advantages of their parents, did in their turn, however slightly and gradually, increase those advantages, and give birth to a still more favored progeny, with repetition of the result to the degree required by "nat "Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un Philosophe Indien avec un Missionaire François, sur la Diminution de la Mer," etc., 8vo, Amsterdam, 1768. An edition in two volumes of this original and suggestive work, was printed, with the life of the author (Demaillet), at the Hague, in 1755. The passage quoted will be found at p. 166, tom. ii. of this edition.) teenth century surpass those of the turbaries and submerged forest-lands which date back long before the beginning of our English history? Does the variability of the artificially bred pigeon, or of the cultivated cabbage outweigh, in a philosophical consideration of the origin of species, those obstinate evidences of persistence of specific types and of inherent limitation of change of character, however closely the seat of such characters of taking care of self and of begetting offmay be connected with the "best chance spring? If certain bounds to the varia bility of specific characters be a law in nature, we then can see why the successive progeny of the best antlered deer, proved to have exceeded the specific limit assigned to be best by wager of battle, should never such best possible antlers under that law of limitation. If unlimited variability by "natural selection" be a law, we ought to see some degree of its operation in the peculiarly favorable test-instance just quoted. That the variability of an organism to a certain extent is a constant and certain condition of life we admit, otherwise there "Individual males have had, in successive gencrations, some slight advantage over other males in their weapons, and have transmitted these advantages to their male offspring."-Darwin, p. 89 PALEOTHERE. Tumbler Runt Pouter Fantail would be no distinguishable individuals of a to the frail foundations of "natural selecspecies. The forester, by the operation of tion" by such illustrations as the subjoined: this law of variability, is able to distinguish his individual oaks, the shepherd his particHyrax Rhinoceros Tapir Horse ular sheep, the teacher his several scholars. This true and proved law of variability is, in fact, the essential condition of individuality itself. We have searched in vain, from Demaillet to Darwin, for the evidence or the proof, that it is only necessary for one individual to vary, be it ever so little, in order to the conclusion that the variability is progressive and unlimited, so as, in the course of generations, to change the species, the genus, the order, or the class. We have no objection to this result of "natural selection" in the abstract; but we desire to have reason for our faith. What we object to is, that science should be compromised through the assumption of its true character by mere hypotheses, the logical consequences of which are of such deep importance. The powers, aspirations, and missions of man are such as to raise the study of his origin and nature, inevitably and by the very necessity of the case, from the mere physiological to the psychological stage of scientific operations. Every step in the progress of this study has tended to obliterate the technical barriers by which logicians have sought to separate the inquiries relating to the several parts of man's nature. The considerations involved in the attempt to disclose the origin of the worm are inadequate to the requirements of the higher problem of the origin of man; and it may be that the conditions of that problem are beyond our present powers of acquiring certain knowledge. To him, indeed, who may deem himself devoid of soul and as the brute that perisheth, any speculation, pointing, with the smallest feasibility, to an intelligible notion of the way of coming in of a lower organized species, may be sufficient, and he need concern himself no further about his own relations to a Creator. But when the members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain are taught by their evening lecturer that such a limited or inadequate view and treatment of the great problem exemplifies that application of science to which England owes her greatness, we take leave to remind the managers that it more truly parallels the abuse of science to which a neighboring nation, some seventy years since, owed its temporary degradation. By their fruits may the promoters of true and false philosophy be known. We gazed with amazement at the audacity of the dispenser of the hour's intellectual amusement, who, availing himself of the technical ignorance of the majority of his auditors, sought to blind them as ROCK-PIGEON. The above diagrams were set before an intelligent audience by a professor, in whom they naturally repose confidence as to facts specially belonging to his science, as parallel instances of departure from type: the one illustrating the extent and directions in which varieties diverge from a type form, in long course of time, by "natural selection; the other showing the correlative examples of such divergence, in a short course of time, through human selection. He told them that, in the latter series, the skeleton varied in regard to the number of vertebræ ; but did not remark that it was in the variable region of the tail, on which no ornithologist ever depended for a specific character, neither did he state that the alleged difference in the number of dorsal vertebræ * was one that is merely simulated by a greater or less extent of the process of anchylosis over a region of the spinal column in which every vertebræ was originally distinct. With regard to the parallel diagram, no allusion was made to such differences in the relative position of the cranial bones as the following, viz.: that in the palæotherium, as in the tapir, the maxillary bones intervene between and separate the nasal bones from the intermaxillary bones; whilst in the horse, as in the hyrax, the nasal and intermaxillary bones are united as far as their extremities; that, consequently, the external nostril is bounded by four bones in the horse, but by six in its implied progenitor; that there is as marked a difference in the conformation of the orbit, which is encircled by the union of the malar with the frontal bone in the horse, but is left widely open or incomplete, by the want of such union in the same two cranial bones of the palæothere. The advocate of the "natural sclection" view exaggerated resemblances and glossed over discrepancies of structure. The resemblance of the Palmothere to its four hypothetical descendants, in respect of their more generalized or more specialized structures, was flippantly affirmed to be as that of a father to his four sons! † hybrids or mongrels from between all the domestic breeds of pigeons are perfectly fertile;" so, likewise, are the hybrids or mongrels from between all the domestic breeds of the horse. Now, as this is not the case with the hybrid between any variety of the horse and of the ass, it may be inferred that the physiological distinction would be, Nothing was said to give his hearers a no- | morphologically but physiologically alike; tion of the important difference between the not merely are the differences of form and horse and palæothere in the structure and structure similar and equivalent, but the implantation of the whole dental system. powers of procreation are the same. "The Yet the horse resembles the elephant in having a long mass of complexly interblended dental substances deeply implanted in a large simple socket; whilst the palæothere differs from both, in having a short mass or crown of differently disposed dental substances implanted by several long fangs in a correspondingly complex socket. To the competent anatomist a score of such anatomical at least, as great, or more insuperable, bedifferences would be present to the memory in contrasting the two alleged parallel series of differences from selection natural and human; to which differences in the palæontological series nothing comparable in essential value has been pointed out in the varieties of Columba livia. The competent palæontologist, moreover, would detect the superficial character of the knowledge that would interpose the tapir in any series leading from palæotherium: he would point to the cocene fophiodon as the true ancestor of the tapir on the derivative hypothesis. Neither zoology nor physiclogy as yet, however, possesses a single fact to support the idea that six incisor and two canine teeth, as in the palæothere, could be blended or changed, by progressive transmutation, into the pair of large scalpriform teeth that projects from the fore part of the lower jaw in the hyrax or scriptural coney. The genuine cultivator of science and true representative of the minds on which the glory and greatness of nations depend, would feel bound to illustrate any series of observed varieties of a species by a true parallel. The hoofed mammals which afford this parallel with the diverging series of pigeons, are the following: Tumbler Runt Pouler Fantail COLUMBA LIVIA. Racer Dray-horse Barb Galloway 1 EQUUS CÁBALLUS. tween the horse and the tapir, or the rhinoceros, or the palæotherium. The infertility, or very rare fertility, of the solipedous mule, even when paired with a true horse or ass, and the absolute infertility of such hybrids inter se, are facts so notorious, that the professorial advocate of "natural selection" was compelled to admit that his alleged parallel broke down at the physiological test,the most important element of the comparison. It is assumed by Mr. Darwin that variations, useful in some way to each being, occur naturally in the course of thousands of generations (p. 80), that such variations are reproduced in the offspring, and, if in harmony with external circumstances, may be heightened in still further modified descendants of the species. The transmission and exaggeration of a variety, step by step, in the generative series, essential to the theory of "natural selection," implies the fertility of the individuals constituting the several steps of the series of transmutation. But numerous instances, familiar to every zoölogist, suggest an objection which seems fatal to the theory, since they show extreme peculiarities of structure and instinct in individuals that cannot transmit them, because they are doomed to perpetual sterility. The most numerous and important members of the hive, which collect the pollen on their peculiarly expanded thighs, and the honey in their peculiarly valvular crop or honey-bag," and which, in the construction of cells of a shape adapted to contain the greatest possible quantity of honey with least possible consumption of wax, have practically solved a recondite mathematical problem, are the neuters, or females with aborHere the differences in regard to size, color, tive sexual organs, "non-breeding females" development of tegumentary appendages, of our great physiologist Hunter. From the number of caudal vertebræ, length or stunt- hypothetical protoplastic progenitor of all edness of muzzle, relative length of limb to animal species, what an enormous series of body, etc., are closely analogous with the di-"slight modifications of structure and inversities which Mr. Darwin has dwelt upon in the first chapter of his work. And not only are the subjects of the above diagrams 1860. Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. stinct" must have rolled, snow-ball like, along the articulate line of departure, to have accumulated, according to "natural selection," in the Apis mellifica, which in the *Darwin, p. 26. days of Moses exercised as now their structures and instincts in the "land flowing with milk and honey! caste " So also in the family of ants, the neuters or sterile females form, in certain species, two, or even three castes,-soldiers, workers, nurses. In Cryptocerus the workers of one carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads;" in the Mexican genus, Myrmecocystus, the workers of one caste are fed by the workers of another caste, and have an enormously expanded abdomen where a sort of honey is secreted and stored, which, like domestic cattle they supply to the rest of the community. Mr. Darwin, with one of his usual happy illustrations, compares the workers of the "driver ant" (Anomma), to a "set of workmen building a house, of whom many were five feet four inches high, sixteen feet high; but we must suppose that the larger workmen had heads four instead of three times as big as those of the smaller men, and jaws nearly five times as big; " in short, the most grotesque and extravagant scene in a pantomime is realized in the industrial community of a West African ant. and many Yet all these instances of exaggerated peculiarities of structure and instinct are manifested in individuals which never could have transmitted them. No zoologist, perhaps, is better acquainted with these fatal exceptions to his principle of the organization of species by hereditary transmission of variation characters, than Mr. Darwin. He could not, with any pretension to free and candid discussion, pass over the chief instances which have checked the natural disposition of all zoologists to obtain inductively an intelligible idea of the most mysterious phenomena of their science. But the barrier at which Cuvier hesitated, Mr. Darwin rushes through, and thus he disposes of the difficulty: "We have even slight differences in the horns of different breeds of cattle in relation to an artificially imperfect state of the male sex; for oxen of certain breeds have longer horns than in other breeds, in comparison with the horns of the bulls or cows of the same breeds. Hence I can see no real difficulty in any character having become correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of insect communities: the difficulty lies in understanding how such correlated modifications of structure could have been slowly accumulated by natural selection. "I have such faith in the powers of selection, that I do not doubt that a breed of cattle, always yielding oxen with extraordinarily long horns, could be slowly formed by carefully watching which individual bulls and cows, when matched, produce oxen with the longest horns; and yet no one ox could ever have propagated its kind. Thus I believe it has been with social insects: a slight modification of structure, or instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, has been advantageous to the community: consequently the fertile males and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tenand females of the same community flourished, dency to produce sterile members having the same modification."-P. 238. It is a notorious and constant fact, that the castrate bovine has longer horns than either the perfect male or female. The progressively elongating result in the case of the oxen, about which our theorist does not doubt, has not been proved experimentally. It is capable of proof or disproof. In scientific questions of far less import than the origin of animal species, involving our own, small value, if any, is attached to supposititious cases. It is, doubtless, by no means necessary that we should sow a seed of the very cauliflower we eat in order to get more cauliflowers; seed of other individuals of the same stock will suffice. So the bee-keeper feels satisfied that the progeny of the impregnated young queen will exercise all the wonderful instincts which result in the production of wax and honey, as effectively as the virgin-sisters of the queen-mother, who were destroyed in the preceding winter. And our readers may well wonder what all this has to do with the explanation of the acquisition of the adaptive structures and instincts of neuter bees, by homeopathic doses of Lamarckian transmutation, accumulating through a long series of hereditary transmissions? We cannot reply; we can only quote, with no less amazement, our author : ble, is lessened, or, as I believe, disappears, when "This difficulty, though appearing insuperait is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end. Thus, a well flavored vegetable is cooked, and the individual the same stock, and confidently expects to get is destroyed; but the horticulturist sows seed of nearly the same variety; breeders of cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well marbled together; the animal has been slaughtered, but the breeder goes with confidence to the same family.”—P. 237. Now every step in the production of the breed or family of cattle may have been observed and recorded; and many of the incidents of the transmutative journey of the edible variety of cabbage from the wild stock may be similarly known; but this is just the knowledge that we desiderate in regard to the creation of the honey-bee by the way of "natural selection;" and, instead of satisfying our craving with the mature fruit of inductive research, Mr. Darwin offers us the intellectual husks above quoted, endorsed |