Time and Life | Page 7

great curve appears straight, the apparent absence of
change in direction of the line being the exponent of the vast extent of
the whole, in proportion to the part we see; so, if it be true that all
living species are the result of the modification of other and simpler
forms, the existence of these little altered persistent types, ranging
through all geological time, must indicate that they are but the final
terms of an enormous series of modifications, which had their being in
the great lapse of pregeologic time, and are now perhaps for ever lost.
In other words, when rightly studied, the teachings of palaeontology are
at one with those of physical geology. Our farthest explorations carry
us back but a little way above the mouth of the great river of Life:
where it arose, and by what channels the noble tide has reached the
point when it first breaks upon our view, is hidden from us.
The foregoing pages contain the substance of a lecture delivered before
the Royal Institution of Great Britain many months ago, and of course
long before the appearance of the remarkable work on the "Origin of
Species" just published by Mr. Darwin, who arrives at very similar

conclusions. Although, in one sense, I might fairly say that my own
views have been arrived at independently, I do not know that I can
claim any equitable right to property in them; for it has long been my
privilege to enjoy Mr. Darwin's friendship, and to profit by
corresponding with him, and by, to some extent, becoming acquainted
with the workings of his singularly original and well-stored mind. It
was in consequence of my knowledge of the general tenor of the
researches in which Mr. Darwin had been so long engaged; because I
had the most complete confidence in his perseverance, his knowledge,
and, above all things, his high-minded love of truth; and, moreover,
because I found that the better I became acquainted with the opinions
of the best naturalists regarding the vexed question of species, the less
fixed they seemed to be, and the more inclined they were to the
hypothesis of gradual modification, that I ventured to speak as strongly
as I have done in the final paragraphs of my discourse.
Thus, my daw having so many borrowed plumes, I see no impropriety
in making a tail to this brief paper by taking another handful of feathers
from Mr. Darwin; endeavouring to point out in a few words, in fact,
what, as I gather from the perusal of his book, his doctrines really are,
and on what sort of basis they rest. And I do this the more willingly, as
I observe that already the hastier sort of critics have begun, not to
review my friend's book, but to howl over it in a manner which must
tend greatly to distract the public mind.
No one will be better satisfied than I to see Mr. Darwin's book refuted,
if any person be competent to perform that feat; but I would suggest
that refutation is retarded, not aided, by mere sarcastic
misrepresentation. Every one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned
pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme
modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which
have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by
domestication. Breeds of dogs are more different from one another than
are the dog and the wolf; and the purely artificial races of pigeons, if
their origin were unknown, would most assuredly be reckoned by
naturalists as distinct species and even genera.
These breeds are always produced in the same way. The breeder selects
a pair, one or other, or both, of which present an indication of the
peculiarity he wishes to perpetuate, and then selects from the offspring

of them those which are most characteristic, rejecting the others. From
the selected offspring he breeds again, and, taking the same precautions
as before, repeats the process until he has obtained the precise degree of
divergence from the primitive type at which he aimed.
If he now breeds from the variety thus established for some generations,
taking care always to keep the stock pure, the tendency to produce this
particular variety becomes more and more strongly hereditary; and it
does not appear that there is any limit to the persistency of the race thus
developed.
Men like Lamarck, apprehending these facts, and knowing that
varieties comparable to those produced by the breeder are abundantly
found in nature, and finding it impossible to discriminate in some cases
between varieties and true species, could hardly fail to divine the
possibility that species even the most distinct were, after all, only
exceedingly persistent varieties, and that they had arisen by the
modification of some common stock, just