LINN^US HISTORY OF CREATION. 45 



sufficed to have utterly demolished all the herbivorous animals, 

 as the herbivorous animals must have destroyed the few 

 individuals of the different species of plants. The existence 

 of such an equilibrium in the economy of nature as obtains 

 at present cannot possibly be conceived, if only one individual 

 of each species, or only one pair, had originally and simul- 

 taneously been created. 



Moreover, how little importance Linnseus himself attached 

 to this untenable hypothesis of creation is clear, among 

 other things, from the fact that he recognized Hyhridism 

 (crossing) as a source of the production of new species. 

 He assumed that a great number of independent new 

 species had originated by the interbreeding of two different 

 species. Indeed, such hybrids are not at all rare in nature, 

 and it is now proved that a great number of species, for 

 example, of the genus Rubus (bramble), mullen (Verbascum), 

 willow (Salix), thistle (Cirsium), are hybrids of different 

 species of these genera. We also know of hybrids between 

 hares and rabbits (two species of the genus Lepus), further 

 of hybrids between different species of dog (genus Canis), 

 etc., which can be propagated as independent species. 



It is certainly very remarkable that Linnseus asserted 

 the physiological (therefore mechanical) origin of new species 

 in this process of hybridism. It clearly stands in direct 

 opposition to the supernatural origin of the other species by 

 creation, which he accepted as put forward in the Mosaic 

 account. The one set of species would therefore have 

 originated by dualistic (teleological) creation, the other by 

 monistic (mechanical) development. 



The great and well merited authority which Linnseus 

 gained by his systematic classification and by his other 



