228 Miscellaneous. 



type of the species, though under circumstances which would seem 

 most unfavorable to the maintenance of the type. Whatever minor 

 differences may exist between the products of this succession of 

 generations, all are individual peculiarities, in no way connected with 

 the essential features of the species, and therefore as transient as the 

 individuals ; while the specific characters are for ever fixed. A single 

 example will prove this. All the robins of North America now living 

 have been for a short time in existence ; not one of them was alive a 

 century ago when Linnaeus for the first time made known that 

 species under the name of Turdus migratorius ; and not one of the 

 specimens observed by Linnaeus and his contemporaries was alive when 

 the Pilgrims of the ' Mayflower ' first set foot upon the Rock of Ply- 

 mouth. Where was the species at these different periods ? and where 

 is it now ? Certainly nowhere but in the individuals alive for the 

 time being ; but not in any single one of them, for that one must be 

 either a male or a female and not the species ; not in a pair of them, 

 for the species exhibits its peculiarities in its mode of breeding, in 

 its nest, in its eggs, in its young, as much as in the appearance of 

 the adult ; not in all the individuals of any particular district, for the 

 geographical distribution of a species over its whole area forms also 

 part of its specific characters # . A species is only known when its 

 whole history has been ascertained ; and that history is recorded in 

 the life of individuals through successive generations. The same 

 kind of argument might be adduced from every existing species, and 

 with still greater force by a reference to those species already known 

 to the ancients. 



Let it not be objected that the individuals of successive generations 

 have presented marked differences among themselves ; for these 

 differences, with all the monstrosities that may have occurred during 

 these countless generations, have passed away with the individuals, 

 as individual peculiarities, and the specific characteristics alone have 

 been preserved, together with all that distinguishes the genus, the 

 family, the order, the class, and the branch to which the individual 

 belonged. Moreover, all this has been maintained through a succes- 

 sion of repeated changes, amounting in each individual to the whole 

 range of transformations through which an individual passes, from 

 the time it is individualized as an egg, to the time it is itself capable 

 of reproducing its kind, and perhaps with all the intervening phases 

 of an unequal production of males and females, of sterile individuals, 

 of dwarfs, of giants, &c. &c, during which there were millions of 

 chances for a deviation from the type. Does this not prove that 

 while individuals are perishable, they transmit, generation after 

 generation, all that is specific or generic, or, in one word, typical in 



* We are so much accustomed to see animals reproducing themselves, genera- 

 tion after generation, that the fact no longer attracts our attention, and the mystery 

 involved in it no longer excites our admiration. But there is certainly no more 

 marvellous law in all Nature than that which regulates this regular succession. 

 And upon this law the maintenance of species depends ; for ohservation teaches 

 us that all that is not individual peculiarity is unceasingly and integrally repro- 

 duced, while all that constitutes individuality as such constantly disappears. 



