ORIGIN OF SPECIES. » 



objection. It is tlic absence of a sufficient number of individuals, and for a sufficieiitly long time to 

 allow the experiment to be fairlj' tried. 



lily hypothesis seems also to furnish a satisfactory explanation of a phenomenon which has 

 puzzled naturalists to account for. Professor Owen refers to a special law of nature the remarkable 

 fact that, "with extinct, as with existing mammalia, particular forms were assigned to par- 

 ticidar provinces, and that the same forms were restricted to the same provinces at a former 

 geological period as at the present da3\"* Dr. Knox (whose ability at least, if not his judgment, 

 commanded respect) held similar views still more strongly. He maintained that so specially were 

 the inhabitants of every country adapted to that place, that they would thrive there and nowhere 

 else ; and he adduced the inhabitants of the United States, and more especially the ISfew Englanders 

 (they being the portion of them longest exposed to the influence of phj-sical conditions different 

 from those of the countries whence their progenitors came), as an instance to show the effect of a 

 change of country or physical condition, however trifling that might be.f I have applied the 

 illustration to a different purpose ; but the use he made of it was to point to the assumed shortness 

 of their lives, the alleged earlier maturity and more speedy loss of beauty in their women, the 

 rapid decay of their teeth, their restless and unsettled habits, and any other similar peculiarities 

 in which he thought they contrasted unfavourably with the English and German people from 

 whom they sj)rang, as evidence of deterioration, and insisted that, but for the constant supply of 

 fresh blood from the original stock, they woidd have been much worse, if not wholly extinct. 

 How he reconciled these fancied ideas of decadence with the general acuteness of the American 

 intellect, and what I may almost admit to be their national supremacy, in ingenuity and constructive 

 facidty ; or how he would have explained awaj' the brilliant courage, chivab'oiis feeling, and heroic 

 endurance, of which so many bright exampiles have beea lavishly given on both sides during the 

 late uuhap)py war, is no business of mine. I do not adopt the Doctor's views. I believe in change, 

 but not in deterioration. If progress is to be imjjorted into the question, then amelioration, not de- 

 terioration, must be the ride. He, however, maintained that the progress was retrograde, that similar 

 sj-mptoms were already showing themselves in the Australian colonies ; and that so marked was the 

 deterioration in the sheep and cattle, that it was only bj' the unceasing importation of the best stock 

 from this comitry that the quality of their flocks and herds was maintained.! This was the dream 

 or fancy of a clever but eccentric man, not perhaps too scrupulous as to the authenticitj' of his facts ; 

 but Professor Owen's unknown law, at least, is the deliberate ojnnion of a sober-minded thinker. 



Sir Charles Lyell, in like manner, thus acknowledges the difficulty, "Dr. Bachman pointed 

 out to mo ten genera of birds and ten of quadrupeds, all peculiar to North America, but each 

 represented on the opposite side of the Rocky Mountains b}' distinct .species. The theory of specific 

 centres, or the doctrine that each sjiecies of bird and quadruped originated in one spot only, may 

 explain in a satisfactory manner one part of this phenomenon ; for we may assume that a lofty 

 chain of mountains opposed a powerful barrier to migration, and that the mnuntains were more 

 ancient than the introduction of these particular quadrupeds and birds into the planet. But the 

 luitUatioH of jK'cnliar (joncric ti/pes to certain (jeographical arean now observed in so many jwrts of the globe 

 2)oints to some other and higher law governing the creation of species itself, which in the present state of 

 science is inscrutable to us, and ma i/ perhaps remain a mijsterij for cver."X 



* Owen, " Report on the Extinct Mammafs of Austra- X Lyell's " Second Visit to tlie United States," vol. i. 



lia," 1844, and "PalEeontology," 1858, p. 397. 3C4, 1S50. 



t Knos on the Eaces of Man, 1862, p. 71 and 7.3. 



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