STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 109 



taken place : " Here we show you evidence that 

 species has persisted unaltered during four thousand 

 years, and you can not show us a single case of 

 species having changed you can not show us one 

 case of a wolf becoming a dog, an ass becoming a 

 horse, a hare becoming a rabbit. Yet you must 

 admit that if there were any inherent tendency 

 to change, four thousand years is a long enough 

 period for that tendency to display itself in ; and 

 we ought to see a very marked difference between 

 the species which lived under Semiramis and those 

 which are living under Victoria. Instead of this, 

 we see that there has been no change : the dog has 

 remained a dog, and the horse has remained a 

 horse; every species retains its well-marked char- 

 acters." 



No one will say that I have not done justice to 

 this argument. I have stated it as clearly and for- 

 cibly as possible, not with any design to captivate 

 your assent, but to make the answer complete. 

 This argument is the cheval de bataille of the Cuvier 

 school ; but, like many other argumentative war- 

 horses, it proves, on close inspection, to be spavined 

 and broken-winded. The first criticism we must 

 pass on it is that it implies the existence of species 

 as a thing which can be spoken of as fixed or varia- 

 ble ; whereas, as we saw in the last chapter, species 

 is an abstraction, like whiteness or strength. No one 

 supposes that there exists any whiteness apart from 

 white things, or strength apart from strong things ; 



