142 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



The Genus felis. 



In his preliminary remarks upon the liou, Buffon 

 while still professing to believe in some considerable 

 mutability of species, seems very far from admitting 

 that all living forms are capable of modification. 

 But he has shown us long since how clearly he saw the 

 impossibility of limiting mutability, if he once admitted 

 so much of the thin end of the wedge as that a horse and 

 an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that he 

 is not speaking "au r6el" here, and we accordingly 

 find him talking clap-trap about the nobleness of the 

 lion in having no species immediately allied to it. A 

 few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual way that 

 the ass and horse are related. 



He writes : 



" Added to all these noble individual features the 

 lion has also what may be called a specific nobility. For 

 I call those species noble which are constant, invari- 

 able, and which are above suspicion of having degene- 

 rated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only 

 ones of their genus. They are distinguished by such 

 well-marked features that they cannot be mistaken, nor 

 confounded with any other species. To begin for ex- 

 ample with man, the noblest of created beings; he is 

 but of a single species, inasmuch as men and women will 

 breed freely inter se in spite of all existing differences 

 of race, climate and colour ; and also inasmuch as there 

 is no other animal which can claim either a distant or 

 near relationship with him. The horse, on the other 

 hand, is more noble as an individual than as a species, 



