THE LOGIC OF DARWINISM 541 



species for this purpose ? I have given above some grounds 

 for thinking that it is precisely this fact that makes them the 

 proper and the only possible material for experimental proof. 

 Domesticated races have not been withdrawn by man from the 

 operation of the active forces of organic nature. Her laws and 

 methods of nutrition, growth and reproduction have not been 

 essentially altered in their case. Had calves and puppies, peas 

 and cabbages in civilised countries ceased to be products of 

 Nature and become works of art like watches or pictures, 

 such expressions would be justified but hardly otherwise. It 

 seems to be forgotten that these species were wild before they 

 were tamed and that some of them at least have congeners yet 

 living in freedom from whom they have diverged under the 

 control of man. Such divergence is proof of the variability of 

 the wild species. In the course of some very effective criticism of 

 Mendelism, Dr. Reid points out that that school has no monopoly 

 of the method of experiment in the study of Biology and did not 

 therein initiate its use, which was practised by Darwin and others 

 before Mendelism was thought of; but if I may say so, he does 

 not go far enough. Ages probably have passed since some one 

 first consciously tried the experiment of breeding from the 

 fastest greyhounds with the deliberate object of improving the 

 race ; ages again before that men unconsciously did the same 

 thing by keeping the hounds they found most useful in the 

 chase and destroying or neglecting the rest, so that as a fact this 

 type of hound is said to be delineated in the wall-carvings of 

 ancient Egypt. This attitude towards the argument from 

 domesticated races seems the less defensible in Dr. Reid, 

 because he justly insists that, as of all animals the best known 

 to us is man, he is therefore the best subject for biological 

 speculation. For the like reason, that we know far more of them 

 than of wild animals and plants, domesticated species furnish 

 the second best materials for experiment and research. Indeed, 

 for the former purpose they are surely the more suitable, both 

 because they are much more amenable to control and because of 

 their far greater rapidity of reproduction. And it may be claimed 

 that this view is supported by the facts, for after all it was 

 from the domesticated races that Darwin chiefly drew the 

 data upon which he founded and, whether by analogy or as I 

 contend by proof positive, finally established his theory. 



Upon the whole it seems that an incorrect and exaggerated 



