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CHAPTER 4
Consideration of the question
whether species have a real existence in nature, continued Phenomena
of hybrids Hunter's opinions as to mule animals Mules not strictly
intermediate between the parent species Hybrid plants Experiments of Kφlreuter The same
repeated by Wiegmann Vegetable hybrids prolific throughout several
generations Why so rare in a wild state Decandolle's opinion
respecting hybrid plants The phenomena of hybrids confirms the
doctrine of the permanent distinctness of species Theory of the
gradation in the intelligence of animals as indicated by the facial
angle Discovery of Tieddemann that the brain of the foetus in mammalia
assumes successively the form of the brain of a fish, reptile, and bird
Bearing of this discovery on the theory of progressive development and
transmutation Recapitulation
WE have yet to consider another class of phenomena, those
relating to the production of hybrids, which have been regarded
in a very different light with reference to their bearing on the
question of the permanent distinctness of species; some naturalists considering them as affording the strongest of all proofs
in favour of the reality of species; others, on the contrary,
appealing to them as countenancing the opposite doctrine, that
all the varieties of organization and instinct now exhibited in
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, may have been propagated
from a small number of original types.
In regard to the mammifers and birds, it is found that no
sexual union will take place between races which are remote
from each other in their habits and organization; and it is only
in species that are very nearly allied that such unions produce
offspring. It may be laid down as a general rule, admitting
of very few exceptions among quadrupeds, that the hybrid
progeny is steril, and there seem to be no well- authenticated
examples of the continuance of the mule race beyond one generation.
The principal number of observations and experiments
relate to the mixed offspring of the horse and the ass; and in
this case it is well established, that the male-mule can generate
and the female-mule produce. Such cases occur in Spain and
Italy, and much more frequently in the West Indies and New
Holland; but these mules have never bred in cold climates,
seldom in warm regions, and still more rarely in temperate
countries.
The hybrid offspring of the female-ass and the stallion, the
of Aristotle, and the hinnus of Pliny, differs from the
mule, or the offspring of the ass and mare. In both cases,
says Buffon, these animals retain more of the mother than of
the father, not only in the magnitude but in the figure of the
body; whereas, in the form of the head, limbs, and tail, they
bear a greater resemblance to the father. The same naturalist
infers, from various experiments respecting cross-breeds between
the he-goat and ewe, the dog and she-wolf, the goldfinch
and canary-bird, that the male transmits his sex to the greatest
number, and that the preponderance of males over females
exceeds that which prevails where the parents are of the same
species.
The celebrated John Hunter has observed, that the true distinction
of species must ultimately be gathered from their
incapacity of propagating with each other, and producing
offspring capable of again continuing itself. He was unwilling,
however, to admit, that the horse and the ass were of the same
species, because some rare instances had been adduced of the
breeding of mules, which he attributed to a degree of monstrosity
in the organs of the mule, for these he suggested might
not have been those of a mixed animal, but those of the mare
or female-ass. "This, he argues, is not a far-fetched idea, for
true species produce monsters, and many animals of distinct
sex are incapable of breeding at all; and as we find nature,
in its greatest perfection, deviating from general principles,
why may it not happen likewise in the production of mules, so
that sometimes a mule shall breed from the circumstance of its
being a monster respecting mules?"
Yet, in the same memoir, this great anatomist inferred that
the wolf, the dog, and the jackal, were all of one species,
because he had found, by two experiments, that the dog would
breed, both with the wolf and the jackal; and that the mule,
in each case, would breed again with the dog. In these cases,
however, we may observe, that there was always one parent at
least of pure breed, and no proof was obtained that a true
hybrid race could be perpetuated; a fact of which we believe
no examples are yet recorded, either in regard to mixtures of
the horse and ass, or any other of the mammalia.
Should the fact be hereafter ascertained, that two mules
can propagate their kind, we must still inquire whether the
offspring may not be regarded in the light of a monstrous
birth, proceeding from some accidental cause, or rather, to
speak more philosophically, from some general law not yet
understood, but which may not be permitted permanently to
interfere with those laws of generation, whereby species may, in
general) be prevented from becoming blended. If, for example,
we discovered that the progeny of a mule race degenerated
greatly in the first generation, in force, sagacity, or any attribute
necessary for its preservation in a state of nature, we
might infer that, like a monster, it is a mere temporary and
fortuitous variety. Nor does it seem probable that the greater
number of such monsters could ever occur unless obtained by
art; for in Hunter's experiments, stratagem or force was, in
most instances, employed to bring about the irregular connexion.
[1]
It seems rarely to happen that the mule offspring is truly
intermediate in character between the two parents. Thus
Hunter mentions, that, in his experiments, one of the hybrid
pups resembled the wolf much more than the rest of the litter;
and we are informed by Wiegmann, that in a litter lately
obtained in the Royal Menagerie at Berlin, from a white
pointer and a she-wolf, two of the cubs resembled the common
wolf-dog, but the third was like a pointer with hanging ears.
There is, undoubtedly, a very close analogy between these
phenomena and those presented by the intermixture of distinct
races of the same species, both in the inferior animals and in
man. Dr. Prichard, in his "Physical History of Mankind,"
cites examples where the peculiarities of the parents have been
transmitted very unequally to the offspring j as where children,
entirely white, or perfectly black, have sprung from the
union of the European and the negro. Sometimes the colour,
or other peculiarities of one parent, after having failed to show
themselves in the immediate progeny, reappear in a subsequent
generation, as where a white child is born of two black parents,
the grandfather having been a white. [2]
The same author judiciously observes, that if different
species mixed their breed, and hybrid races were often propagated,
the animal world would soon present a scene of confusion;
its tribes would be everywhere blended together, and
we should, perhaps, find more hybrid creatures than genuine and
uncorrupted races. [3]
The history of the vegetable kingdom has been thought to
afford more decisive evidence in favour of the theory of the formation
of new and permanent species from hybrid stocks. The
first accurate experiments in illustration of this curious subject
appear to have been made by Kolreuter, who obtained a hybrid
from two species of Tobacco, Nicotiana rusltica and N. paniculata,
which differ greatly in the shape of their leaves, the colour of
the corolla, and the height of the stem. The stigma of a female
plant of N. rustica was impregnated with the pollen of a male
plant of N. paniculafa. The seed ripened and produced a hybrid
which was intermediate between the two parents, and which,
like all the hybrids which this botanist brought up, had imperfect
stamens. He afterwards impregnated this hybrid with
the pollen of N. paniculata, and obtained plants which much
more resembled the last. This he continued through several
generations, until, by due perseverance, he actually changed the Nicotiana rustica into the Nicotiana paniculata.
The plan of impregnation adopted, was the cutting off of the
anthers of the plant intended for fructification before they had
shed pollen, and then laying on foreign pollen upon the stigma.
The same experiment has since been repeated, with success,
by Wiegmann, who found that he could bring back the hybrids
to the exact likeness of either parent, by crossing them a sufficient
number of times.
The blending of the characters of the parent stocks, in many
other of Weigmann's experiments, was complete; the colour
and shape of the leaves and flowers, and even the scent, being
intermediate, as in the offspring of the two species of verbascum.
An intermarriage, also, between the common onion and the leek
(Allium cepa and A. porrum) gave a mule plant, which, in the
character of its leaves and flowers, approached most nearly to
the garden onion, but had the elongated bulbous root and smell
of the leek.
The same botanist remarks, that vegetable hybrids, when not
strictly intermediate, more frequently approach the female than
the male parent species, but they never exhibit characters
foreign to both. A re-cross with one of the original stocks,
generally causes the mule plant to revert towards that stock;
but this is not always the case, the offspring sometimes continuing
to exhibit the character of a full hybrid.
In general, the success attending the production and perpetuity of
hybrids among plants, depends, as in the animal kingdom,
on the degree of proximity between the species intermarried.
If their organization be very remote, impregnation never takes
place; if somewhat less distant, seeds are formed, but always
imperfect and sterile The next degree of relationship yields
hybrid seedlings, but these are barren; and it is only when the
parent species are very nearly allied, that the hybrid race may
be perpetuated for several generations. Even in this case the
best authenticated examples seem confined to the crossing of
hybrids with individuals of pure breed. In none of the experiments
most accurately detailed does it appear that both the
parents were mules.
Wiegmann diversified, as much as possible, his mode of
bringing about these irregular unions among plants. He often
sowed parallel rows, near to each other, of the species from
which he desired to breed, and instead of mutilating, after
Kolreuter's fashion, the plants of one of the parent stocks, he
merely washed the pollen off their anthers. The branches of
the plants, in each row, were then gently bent towards each
other and intertwined, so that the wind, and numerous insects
as they passed from the flowers of one to those of the other
species, carried the pollen and produced fecundation.
The same observer saw a good exemplification of the manner
in which hybrids may be formed in a state of nature. Some
wallflowers and pinks had been growing in a garden, in a dry
sunny situation, and their stigmas had been ripened so as to be
moist, and to absorb pollen with avidity, although their anthers
were not yet developed. These stigmas became impregnated
by pollen, blown from some other adjacent plants of the same
species, but had they been of different species, and not too
remote in their organization, mule races must have resulted.
When, indeed, we consider how busily some insects have been
shown to be engaged in conveying anther-dust from flower to
flower, especially bees, flower-eating beetles, and the like, it
seems a most enigmatical problem how it can happen, that promiscuous
alliances between distinct species are not perpetually
occurring.
How continually do we observe the bees diligently employed
in collecting the red and yellow powder by which the stamens of
flowers are covered, loading it on their hind legs, and carrying
it to their hive for the purpose of feeding their young! In thus
providing for their own progeny, these insects assist materially
the process of fructification. [4] Few of our readers need be
reminded, that the stamens in certain plants grow on different
blossoms from the pistils, and unless the summit of the pistil
be touched with the fertilizing dust, the fruit does not swell,
nor the seed arrive at maturity. It is by the help of bees
chiefly, that the development of the fruit of many such species
is secured, the powder which they have collected from the
stamens being unconsciously left by them in visiting the pistils.
How often, during the heat of a summer's day, do we see
the males of dioecious plants, such as the yew-tree, standing
separate from the females, and sending off into the air, upon
the slightest breath of wind, clouds of buoyant pollen! That
the zephyr should so rarely intervene to fecundate the plants
of one species with the anther-dust of others, seems almost to
realize the converse of the miracle believed by the credulous
herdsmen of the Lusitanian mares --
Ore omnes versae in Zephyrum, stant rupibus altis,
Exceptantque leves auras: et saepe sine ullis
Conjugiis, vento gravidae, mirabile dictu. [5]
But, in the first place, it appears that there is a natural
aversion in plants, as well as in animals, to irregular sexual
unions; and in most of the successful experiments in the animal
and vegetable world, some violence has been used, in order to
procure impregnation. The stigma imbibes, slowly and reluctantly,
the granules of the pollen of another species, even when
it is abundantly covered with it; and if it happen that, during
this period, ever so slight a quantity of the anther-dust of its
own species alight upon it, this is instantly absorbed, and the
effect of the foreign pollen destroyed. Besides, it does not often
happen that the male and female organs of fructification, in
different species, arrive at a state of maturity at precisely the
same time. Even where such synchronism does prevail, so that
a cross impregnation is effected, the chances are very numerous
against the establishment of a hybrid race.
If we consider the vegetable kingdom generally, it must be
recollected, that even of the seeds which are well ripened, the
greater part are either eaten by insects, birds, and other animals,
or decay for want of room and opportunity to germinate. Unhealthy
plants are the first which are cut off by causes prejudicial
to the species, being usually stifled by more vigorous individuals
of their own kind. If, therefore, the relative fecundity or
hardiness of hybrids be in the least degree inferior, they cannot
maintain their footing for many generations, even if they were
ever produced beyond one generation in a wild state. In the
universal struggle for existence, the right of the strongest
eventually prevails; and the strength and durability of a race
depends mainly on its prolificness, in which hybrids are
acknowledged to be deficient.
Centaurea hyhrida, a plant which never bears seed, and is
supposed to be produced by the frequent intermixture of two
well-known species of Centaurea, grows wild upon a hill near
Turin. Ranunculus lacerus, also steril, has been produced
accidentally at Grenoble, and near Paris, by the union of two
Ranunculi; but this occurred in gardens. [6]
Mr. Herbert, in one of his ingenious papers on mule plants,
endeavours to account for their non-occurrence in a state of
nature, from the circumstance that all the combinations that
were likely to occur, have already been made many centuries
ago, and have formed the various species of botanists; but in
our gardens, he says, whenever species, having a certain degree of
affinity to each other, are transported from different countries,
and brought for the first time into contact, they give rise to
hybrid species. [7] But we have no data, as yet, to warrant the
conclusion, that a single permanent hybrid race has ever been
formed, even in gardens, by the intermarriage of two allied
species brought from distant habitations. Until some fact of
this kind is fairly established, and a new species, capable of
perpetuating itself in a state of perfect independence of man,
can be pointed out, we think it reasonable to call in question
entirely this hypothetical source of new species. That varieties
do sometimes spring up from cross breeds, in a natural way,
can hardly be doubted, but they probably die out even more
rapidly than races propagated by grafts or layers.
Decandolle, whose opinion on a philosophical question of this
kind deserves the greatest attention, has observed, in his Essay
on Botanical Geography, that the varieties of plants range
themselves under two general heads: those produced by external
circumstances, and those formed by hybridity. After
adducing various arguments to show that neither of these
causes can explain the permanent diversity of plants indigenous
in different regions, he says, in regard to the crossing of races,
"I can perfectly comprehend, without altogether sharing the
opinion, that where many species of the same genera occur near
together, hybrid species may be formed, and I am aware that
the great number of species of certain genera which are found
in particular regions, may be explained in this manner; but
I am unable to conceive how anyone can regard the same
explanation as applicable to species which live naturally at great
distances. If the three larches, for example, now known in the
world, lived in the same localities, I might then believe that
one of them was the produce of the crossing of the two others;
but I never could admit that the Siberian species has been
produced by the crossing of those of Europe and America. I
see, then, that there exist, in organized beings, permanent differences
which cannot be referred to anyone of the actual
causes of variation, and these differences are what constitute
species." [8]
The most decisive arguments, perhaps, amongst many others,
against the probability of the derivation of permanent species
from cross breeds, are to be drawn from the fact alluded to by
Decandolle, of species having a close affinity to each other
occurring in distinct botanical provinces, or countries inhabited
by groups of distinct species of indigenous plants. For
in this case naturalists, who are not prepared to go the whole
length of the transmutationists, are under the necessity of
admitting, that in some cases species which approach very near
to each other in their characters, were so created from their
origin; an admission fatal to the idea of its being a general
law of nature, that a few original types only should be formed,
and that all intermediate races should spring from the intermixture
of those stocks.
This notion, indeed, is wholly at variance with all that we
know of hybrid generation; for the phenomena entitle us to
affirm, that had the types been at first somewhat distant, no
cross-breeds would ever have been produced, much less those
prolific races which we now recognise as distinct species.
In regard, moreover, to the permanent propagation of hybrid
races among animals, insuperable difficulties present themselves,
when we endeavour to conceive the blending together of the
different instincts and propensities of two species, so as to
insure the preservation of the intermediate race. The common
mule, when obtained by human art, may be protected by the
power of man; but in a wild state, it would neither have precisely
the same wants as the horse or the ass: and if, in consequence
of some difference of this kind, it strayed from the
herd, it would soon be hunted down by beasts of prey and
destroyed.
If we take some genus of insects, such as the bee, we
find that each of the numerous species has some difference in its
habits, its mode of collecting honey, or constructing its dwelling,
or providing for its young, and other particulars. In
the case of the common hive-bee, the workers are described, by
Kirby and Spence, as being endowed with no less than thirty
distinct instincts. [9] So also we find that amongst a most
numerous class of spiders, there are nearly as many different
modes of spinning their webs as there are species. When we
recollect how complicated are the relations of these instincts
with co-existing species, both of the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
it is scarcely possible to imagine that a bastard race could
spring from the union of two of these species, and retain just
so much of the qualities of each parent-stock as to preserve its
ground in spite of the dangers which surround it.
We should also ask, if a few generic types alone have been
created among insects, and the intermediate species have proceeded from hybridity, where are those original types, combining,
as they ought to do, the elements of all the instincts
which have made their appearance in the numerous derivative
races? So also in regard to animals of all classes, and of plants;
if species in general are of hybrid origin, where are the stocks
which combine in themselves the habits, properties, and organs,
of which all the intervening species ought to afford us mere
modifications?
We shall now conclude this subject by summing up, in a
few words, the results to which the consideration of the phenomena
of hybrids has led us. It appears that the aversion of
individuals of distinct species to the sexual union is common
to animals and plants, and that it is only when the species
approach near to each other, in their organization and habits,
that any offspring are produced from their connexion. Mules
are of extremely rare occurrence in a state of nature, and no
examples are yet known of their having procreated in a wild
state. But it has been proved, that hybrids are not universally
steril, provided the parent stocks have a near affinity to
each other, although the continuation of the mixed race, for
several generations, appears hitherto to have been obtained
only by crossing the hybrids with individuals of pure species,
an experiment which by no means bears out the hypothesis
that a true hybrid race could ever be permanently established.
Hence we may infer, that aversion to sexual intercourse is,
in general, a good test of the distinctness of original stocks, or
of species, and the procreation of hybrids is a proof of the very
near affinity of species. Perhaps, hereafter, the number of
generations for which hybrids may be continued, before the
race dies out (for it seems usually to degenerate rapidly), may
afford the zoologist and botanist an experimental test of the
difference in the degree of affinity of allied species.
We may also remark, that if it could have been shown that
a single permanent species had ever been produced by hybridity
(of which there is no satisfactory proof), it might certainly
have lent some countenance to the notions of the ancients
respecting the gradual deterioration of created things, but none
whatever to Lamarck's theory of their progressive perfectibility;
for observations have hitherto shown that there is a tendency,
in mule animals and plants, to degenerate in organization.
We have already remarked, that the theory of progressive
development arose from an attempt to ingraft the doctrines of
the transmutationists upon one of the most popular generalizations
in geology. But modern geological researches have almost
destroyed every appearance of that gradation in the successive
groups of animate beings, which was supposed to indicate the
slow progress of the organic world from the more simple to the
more compound structure. In the more modern formations,
we find clear indications that the highest orders of the terrestrial
mammalia were fully represented during several successive
epochs; but, in the monuments which we have hitherto examined
of more remote eras, in which there are as yet discovered
few fluviatile, and perhaps no lacustrine formations, and, therefore,
scarcely any means of obtaining an insight into the zoology
of the then existing continents, we have only as yet found one
example of a mammiferous quadruped. The recent origin of
man, and the absence of all signs of any rational being holding
an analogous relation to former states of the animate world,
affords one, and the only reasonable argument, in support of the
hypothesis of a progressive scheme, but none whatever in favour
of the fancied evolution of one species out of another.
When the celebrated anatomist, Camper, first attempted to
estimate the degrees of sagacity of different animals, and of the
races of man, by the measurement of the facial angle, some
speculators were bold enough to affirm, that certain simiae differed as little from the more savage races of men, as do these
from the human race in general; and that a scale might be
traced from "apes with foreheads villanous low," to the
African variety of the human species, and from that to the
European. The facial angle was measured by drawing a line
from the prominent centre of the forehead to the most advanced
part of the lower jaw-bone, and observing the angle which it
made with the horizontal line ; and it was affirmed, that there
was a regular series from birds to the mammalia.
The gradation from the dog to the monkey was said to be perfect,
and from that again to man. One of the ape tribe has a facial
angle of 42Ί, and another, which approximated nearest to man
in figure, an angle of 50°. To this succeeds (Iongo sed proximus
intervallo) the head of the African negro, which, as well as that of
the Kalmuc, forms an angle of 70°, while that of the European
contains 80°. The Roman painters preferred the angle of 95°,
and the character of beauty and sublimity, so striking in some
works of Grecian sculpture, as in the head of Apollo, and in
the Medusa of Sisocles, is given by an angle which amounts to
100°. [10]
A great number of valuable facts and curious analogies
in comparative anatomy, were brought to light during the
investigations which were made by Camper, John Hunter, and
others, to illustrate this scale of organization; and their facts
and generalizations must not be confounded with the fanciful
systems which White and others deduced from them. [11]
That there is some connexion between an elevated and capacious
forehead in certain races of men, and a large development
of the intellectual faculties, seems highly probable; and that a
low facial angle is frequently accompanied with inferiority of
mental powers, is certain; but the attempt to trace a graduated
scale of intelligence through the different species of animals
accompanying the modifications of the form of the skull, is a
mere visionary speculation. It has been found necessary to
exaggerate the sagacity of the ape tribe at the expense of the
dog, and strange contradictions have arisen in the conclusions
deduced from the structure of the elephant, some
anatomists being disposed to deny the quadruped the intelligence
which he really possesses, because they found that the
volume of his brain was small in comparison to that of the other
mammalia, while others were inclined to magnify extravagantly
the superiority of its intellect, because the vertical height of its
skull is so great when compared to its horizontal length.
It would be irrelevant to our subject if we were to enter into
a farther discussion on these topics~ because, even if a graduated
scale of organization and intelligence could have been
established, it would prove nothing in favour of a tendency, in
each species, to attain a higher state of perfection. We may
refer the reader to the writings of Blumenbach, Prichard,
Lawrence, and others, for convincing proofs that the varieties
of form, colour, and organization of different races of men, are
perfectly consistent with the generally received opinion, that all
the individuals of the species have originated from a single
pair; and while they exhibit in man as many diversities of a
physiological nature, as appear in any other species, they confirm
also the opinion of the slight deviation from a common
standard of which a species is capable.
The power of existing and multiplying in every latitude, and
in every variety of situation and climate, which has enabled
the great human family to extend itself over the habitable globe,
is partly, says Lawrence, the result of physical constitution,
and partly of the mental prerogative of man. If he did not
possess the most enduring and flexible corporeal frame, his
arts would not enable him to be the inhabitant of all climates,
and to brave the extremes of heat and cold, and the other
destructive influences of local situation. [12] Yet, notwithstanding
this flexibility of bodily frame, we find no signs of indefinite
departure from a common standard, and the intermarriages of
individuals of the most remote varieties are not less fruitful
than between those of the same tribe.
There is yet another department of anatomical discovery, to
which we must not omit some allusion, because it has appeared
to some persons to afford a distant analogy, at least, to that
progressive development by which some of the inferior species
may have been gradually perfected into those of more complex
organization. Tieddemann found, and his discoveries have been
most fully confirmed and elucidated by M. Serres, that the
brain of the foetus, in the highest class of vertebrated animals,
assumes, in succession, the various forms which belong to fishes,
reptiles, and birds, before it acquires those additions and
modifications
which are peculiar to the mammiferous tribe. So that
in the passage from the embryo to the perfect mammifer, there
is a typical representation, as it were, of all those transformations
which the primitive species are supposed to have undergone,
during a long series of generations, between the present
period and the remotest geological era.
If you examine the brain of the mammalia, says M. Serres,
at an early stage of uterine life, you perceive the cerebral
hemispheres consolidated, as in fish, in two vesicles isolated one
from the other; at a later period, you see them affect the configuration
of the cerebral hemispheres of reptiles; still later
again, they present you with the forms of those of birds; finally,
they acquire, at the era of birth, and sometimes later, the permanent
forms which the adult mammalia present.
The cerebral hemispheres, then, only arrive at the state
which we observe in the higher animals by a series of successive
metamorphoses. If we reduce the whole of these evolutions
to four periods, we shall see that in the first are born the
cerebral lobes of fishes, and this takes place homogeneously in
all classes. The second period will give us the organization
of reptiles; the third the brain of birds; and the fourth the
complex hemispheres of mammalia.
If we could develop the different parts of the brain of the
inferior classes, we should make in succession a reptile out of a
fish, a bird out of a reptile, and a mammiferous quadruped out
of a bird. If, on the contrary, we could starve this organ in
the mammalia, we might reduce it successively to the condition
of the brain of the three inferior classes.
Nature often presents us with this last phenomenon in monsters,
but never exhibits the first. Among the various deformities
which organized beings may experience, they never pass
the limits of their own classes to put on the forms of the class
above them. Never does a fish elevate itself so as to assume
the form of the brain of a reptile; nor does the latter ever
attain that of birds; nor the bird that of the mammifer. It
may happen that a monster may have two heads, but the conformation
of the brain always remains circumscribed narrowly within the limits of
its class. [13]
It will be observed, that these curious phenomena disclose,
in a highly interesting manner, the unity of plan that runs
through the organization of the whole series of vertebrated
animals; but they lend no support whatever to the notion of a
gradual transmutation of one species into another, least of all of
the passage, in the course of many generations, from an animal
of a more simple, to one of a more complex structure. On the
contrary, were it not for the sterility imposed on monsters, as
well as on hybrids in general, the argument to be derived from
Tieddemann's discovery, like that deducible from experiments
respecting hybridity, would be in favour of the successive
degeneracy, rather than the perfectibility, in the course of ages,
of certain classes of organic beings.
For the reasons, therefore, detailed in this and the two preceding
chapters, we draw the following inferences, in regard to
the reality of species in nature.
First, That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate
themselves, to a certain extent, to a change of external circumstances,
this extent varying greatly according to the species.
2dly. When the change of situation which they can endure is
great, it is usually attended by some modifications of the form,
colour, size, structure, or other particulars; but the mutations
thus superinduced are governed by constant laws, and the capability
of so varying forms part of the permanent specific character.
3dly. Some acquired peculiarities of form, structure, and
instinct, are transmissible to the offspring; but these consist
or such qualities and attributes only as are intimately related
to the natural wants and propensities of the species.
4thly. The entire variation from the original type, which
any given kind of change can produce, may usually be effected
in a brief period of time, after which no farther deviation can
be obtained by continuing to alter the circumstances, though
ever so gradually, -- indefinite divergence, either in the way of
improvement or deterioration, being prevented, and the least
possible excess beyond the defined limits being fatal to the
existence of the individual.
5thly. The intermixture of distinct species is guarded against
by the aversion of the individuals composing them to sexual
union, or by the sterility of the mule offspring. It does not
appear that true hybrid races have ever been perpetuated for
several generations, even by the assistance of man; for the
cases usually cited relate to the crossing of mules with individuals
of pure species, and not to the intermixture of hybrid
with hybrid.
6thly. From the above considerations, it appears that species
have a real existence in nature, and that each was endowed, at
the time of its creation, with the attributes and organization by
which it is now distinguished.
_______________
Notes:
1. Phil. Trans. 1787. Additional Remarks, Phil. Trans. 1789.
2. Vol. i., p. 217.
3. Ibid., vol. i, p. 97.
4. See Barton on the Geography of Plants, p. 67.
5. Georg. lib. iii. 273.
6. Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, Hort. Trans., vol. iv., p. 41.
7. Ibid.
8. Essai Elementaire, &c. 3me. partie.
9. Intr. to Entom., vol. ii., p. 504. Ed. 1817.
10. Prichard, Phys. Hist. of Mankind, vol. i., p. 159.
11. Ch. White on the regular Gradation in Man, &c., 1799.
12. Lawrence, Lectures on Phys. Zool. and Nat.
Hist. of Man, p.192. Ed. 1823.
13. E. R. A. Serres, Anatomie Comparee du Cerveau, illustrated by
numerous
plates, tom. i., 1824.
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