OF PART I. 21 



known, but in all works it is assumed, in (?) flat 

 contradiction to all known facts, that the amount of 

 possible variation is soon acquired. Are not all the 

 most varied species, the oldest domesticated: who 

 (would) think that horses or corn could be produced ? 

 Take dahlia and potato, who will pretend in 5000 

 years 1 (that great changes might not be effected): 

 perfectly adapted to conditions and then again 

 brought into varying conditions. Think what has 

 been done in few last years, look at pigeons, and 

 cattle. With the amount of food man can produce 

 he may have arrived at limit of fatness or size, or 

 thickness of wool (?), but these are the most trivial 

 points, but even in these I conclude it is impossible to 

 say we know the limit of variation. And therefore with 

 the [adapting] selecting power of nature, infinitely 

 wise compared to those of man, (I conclude) that it 

 is impossible to say we know the limit of races, 

 which would be true (to their) kind ; if of different 

 constitutions would probably be infertile one with 

 another, and which might be adapted in the most 

 singular and admirable manner, according to their 

 wants, to external nature and to other surrounding 

 organisms, such races would be species. But is 

 there any evidence (that) species (have) been thus 

 produced, this is a question wholly independent of 

 all previous points, and which on examination of 

 the kingdom of nature (we) ought to answer one 

 way or another. 



1 In Var. under Dom. Ed. 2, ii. p. 263, the Dahlia is described 

 as showing sensitiveness to conditions in 1841. All the varieties of the 

 Dahlia are said to have arisen since 1804 (ibid. i. p. 393). 



