Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 215 



to the isolated colony of rabbits thus peculiarly 

 situated. Four centuries is long enough to admit of 

 natural selection effecting all these changes in the case 

 of so rapidly breeding an animal as the rabbit, and there- 

 fore it is needless to look further for any explanation 

 of the facts. Such, I say, is presumably the answer 

 that would be given by the upholders of natural 

 selection as the only possible cause of specific change. 

 But now, in this particular case it so happens that 

 the answer admits of being conclusively negatived, 

 by showing that the great assumption on which it 

 reposes is demonstrably false. For Darwin examined 

 two living specimens of these rabbits which had 

 recently been sent from Porto Santo to the Zoo- 

 logical Gardens, and found them coloured as just 

 described. Four years afterwards the dead body 

 of one of them was sent to him, and then he found 

 that the following changes had taken place. " The ears 

 were plainly edged, and the upper surface of the tail 

 was covered with blackish-grey fur, and the whole 

 body was much less red ; so that under the English 

 climate this individual rabbit has recovered the proper 

 colour of its fur in rather less than four years ! " 



Mr. Darwin adds : 



" If the history of these Porto Santo rabbits had not been 

 known, most naturalists, on observing their much reduced size, 

 their colour, reddish above and grey beneath, their tails and 

 ears not tipped with black, would have ranked them as a 

 distinct species. They would have been strongly confirmed in 

 this view by seeing them alive in the Zoological Gardens, and 

 hearing that they refused to couple with other rabbits. Yet this 

 rabbit, which there can be little doubt would thus have been 

 ranked as a distinct species, as certainly originated since the 

 year 1420 ! . 



* Variation, &c. vol. i. p. 120. 



