184 CORRESPONDENCE. 



expressed as a fraction when compared with the vast ages which 

 must have elapsed wliilst the paleozoic and the mesozoic rocks 

 were laid down ; and the post-tertiary, when man (as we know 

 him) and the modern species of animals took their rise, is a mere 

 insignificant sediment compared even to the tertiary period. 

 How, then, shall we express the geological_insignificance of the 

 human historical period ? 



Under domestication, it is true that the progress of evolution 

 is more rapid than under normal circumstances. Yet man, so far 

 as I am aware, has only succeeded in accelerating the evolution of 

 one new family, that of the domestic dog, which can be traced 

 through distinct lines of descent from the wolf and jackal. But 

 the domestic dog becomes a true dog long before the oldest 

 Egyptian mummy received its wrappings ; ^the cat, a far more 

 modern and highly specialized carnivore, has not had time to 

 change since it was first domesticated. 



What has all this to do with plants ? may fairly be asked. I 

 do not pretend to any acquaintance with paleobotany, but I 

 cannot help thinking that the laws which govern one great branch 

 of living beings govern also the other, and that as animals vary by 

 slow degrees during the vast ages of geological time, so plants 

 must also change. We see cultivated plants alter just as rapidly 

 under the hand of man, as domesticated animals; we see the 

 forest tree of warm regions become the creeping shrub of Arctic 

 climes ; therefore, we know that vegetable forms vary with the 

 action of their environment as do animals. There is also the 

 same tendency to the late evolution of higher forms which we see 

 in animals, and a tendency in some of the lower forms to dwindle 

 away ; as witness the giant calamites of the coal forests^ as com- 

 pared with the pigmy horsetails of the present day. The Equiseta 

 are to the calamites much what the modern newt is as compared 

 with the ancient labyrinthodont. My contention is not as to any 

 point of paleobotany, of which I am certainly not qualified to 

 judge, but only as to the utter insufificiency of the^time which has 

 elapsed since Egypt was a civilised kingdom, to^ produce' new 

 species of either animals or plants. 



Should anyone wish to see how almost imperceptibly, but how 

 surely, Nature works in altering " types," I would refer him to 

 some of the later lectures of Professor Cope, in his " Origin of 

 the Fittest." A more popular account is given by Oscar Schmidt 

 in "The Mammalia" International Scientific Series. 



Yours faithfully, 



Alice Bodington. 



Vancouver. 



