OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 413 



and cared for, and kept separate ; — and it may be confidently inferred 

 that they vary in cultivation, at first, much as they would have varied 

 in the wild state, if such favorable opportunity had there occurred. 

 Continued cultivation under artificial selection would of course force 

 some of these results to an extreme never reached in nature, giving to 

 long-cultivated varieties a character of their own. Yet they may not 

 deviate more widely from the wild type than do some of the wild vari- 

 eties of many plants of wide geographical range. Moreover, Professor 

 Gray maintained that there occur in nature the same kinds of varia- 

 tion as those to which we owe our improved fruits, &c. ; that such 

 originate not rarely in nature, and develop to a certain extent, enough 

 to show the same cause operating in free as in controlled nature ; 

 enough to have shown the cultivator what he should take in hand ; 

 enough to render it likely that most of our cultivated species of fruit 

 began their career of improvement before man took them in hand. 

 Instances of such variations in the wild state were adduced from our 

 Hawthorns, especially Cratoegus tomentosa, from our Wild Red Plum, 

 Wild Cherries, and especially from our Wild Grapes and Hickories. 



3. The view taken by Mr. Lowell, and especially by Professor 

 Bowen, that the indefinitely long periods of time which the theory 

 required and assumed was practically equivalent to infinity, and there- 

 fore rendered the theory " completely metaphysical in character," 

 Professor Gray animadverted upon, mainly to remark that the theory 

 in question would generally be regarded as too materialistic and physi- 

 cal, rather than too metaphysical in character ; and that, a fortiori, 

 physical geology and physical astronomy would on this principle be 

 metaphysical sciences. 



4. Exceptions were taken against the assumption of such a wide 

 distinction, or of any sharply drawn distinction at their confines, be- 

 tween the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, and especially against 

 the view that instinct sharply defines the animal -kingdom from the 

 vegetable kingdom on the one hand, and from man on the other, and 

 Avhich denies to the higher brutes intelligence, and to man instinct. 



5. Also, against the view that the psychical endowments of the 

 brute animals, whether instinct or other, are invariable and unim- 

 provable ; and a variety of instances were adduced, as recorded in 

 the works of Pritchard and of Isidore St. Hilaire, as well as some 

 from personal observation, in which acquired habitudes or varied 



