RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 197 



/ 



gists, to say if, in the vast majority of cases, they know, or 

 mean to affirm, anything more of the group of animals or 

 plants they so denominate than what has just been stated. 

 Even the most decided advocates of the received doctrines 

 respecting species admit this. 



" I apprehend," says Professor Owen, (e) " that few 

 naturalists now-a-days, in describing and proposing a 

 name for what they call ' a new species? use the term to 

 signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago ; 

 that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its 

 primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. 

 The proposer of the new species now intends to state no 

 more than he actually knows ; as, for example, that the 

 differences on which he founds the specific character are 

 constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation 

 has reached ; and that they are not due to domestication 

 or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or to 

 any outward influence within his cognizance ; that the 

 species is wild, or is such as it appears by Nature." 



If we consider, in fact, that by far the largest propor- 

 tion of recorded existing species are known only by the 

 study of their skins, or bones, or other lifeless exuviae ; that 

 we are acquainted \yith none, or next to none, of their 

 physiological peculiarities, beyond those which can be 

 deducted from their structure, or are open to cursory 

 observation ; and that we cannot hope to learn more of 

 any of those extinct forms of life which now constitute no 

 inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora and Fauna 

 of the world : it is obvious that the definitions of these 

 species can be only of a purely structural or morphological 



(e) " On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs" : Transactions 



of the Zoological Society, 1858. 



