FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF ANIMALS 63 



in different geographical areas, applies with the same force to species 

 succeeding each other in the course of time. 



When domesticated animals and cultivated plants are mentioned 

 as furnishing evidence of the mutability of species the circumstance 

 is constantly overlooked or passed over in silence that the first point 

 to be established respecting them, in order to justify any inference 

 from them against the fixity of species, would be to show that each 

 of them has originated from one common stock, which, far from be- 

 ing the case, is flatly contradicted by the positive knowledge we have 

 that the varieties of several of them at least are owing to the entire 

 amalgamation of different species. ^'-^ The Egyptian monuments show 

 further that many of those so-called varieties which are supposed to 

 be the product of time are as old as any other animals which have 

 been known to man; at all events, we have no tradition, no monu- 

 mental evidence of the existence of any wild animal older than that 

 which represents domesticated animals, already as different among 

 themselves as they are now.^^ It is therefore quite possible that the 

 different races of domesticated animals were originally distinct spe- 

 cies, more or less mixed now, as the different races of men are. More- 

 over, neither domesticated animals nor cultivated plants, nor the 

 races of men, are the proper subjects for an investigation respecting 

 the fixity or mutability of species, as all involve already the question 

 at issue in the premises which are assumed in introducing them as 

 evidence in the case. With reference to the different breeds of our 

 domesticated animals, which are known to be produced by the man- 

 agement of man, as well as certain varieties of our cultivated plants, 

 they must be well distinguished from permanent races, which, for 

 aught we know, may be primordial; for breeds are the result of the 

 fostering care of man; they are the product of the limited influence 

 and control the human mind has over organized beings, and not the 

 free product of mere physical agents. They show therefore that even 

 the least important changes which may take place during one and 

 the same cosmic period among animals and plants are controlled by 

 an intellectual power and do not result from the immediate action 

 of physical catises. 



So far then from disclosing the effects of physical agents, whatever 



^ Our fowls, for instance. 



^ Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 386. 



