Chap. II. INDIVIDUALITY AMONG ACALEPHS. 93 



states that the close affinity existing among animals can only be explained l:)y a 

 community of descent, and he goes so far as to represent these affinities as evidence 

 of such a genealogical relationship ; but I apprehend that the meaning of the 

 words he uses has misled him into the belief that he had found the clue to 

 phenomena which he does not even seem correctly to understand. There is nothing 

 parallel between the relations of animals belonging to the same genus or the same 

 family, and the relations between the progeny of common ancestors. In the one 

 case we have the result of a physiological law regulating reproduction, and in 

 the other, affinities which no observation has thus far shown to be in any way 

 connected with reproduction. The most closely allied species of the same genus 

 or the different species of closely allied genera, or the different genera of one 

 and the same natural family, embrace representatives, which, at some period or 

 other of their growth, resemble one another more closely than the nearest blood 

 relations ; and yet we know that they are only stages of development of different 

 species distinct from one another at every period of their life. The embryo of 

 our common fresh-water turtle ( Chryscmis picfa) and the emljryo of our snapping 

 turtle ( Chdi/dra sa-peniuia) resemble one another far more than the different species 

 of Chrysemis in their adult state ; and yet not a single fact can be adduced to 

 show that any one egg of an animal has ever produced an individual of any 

 species but its own. A young snake resembles a young turtle or a young bird 

 much more than any two species of snakes resemble one another; and yet they 

 go on reproducing their kinds, and nothing but their kinds. So that no degree 

 of affinity, however close, can, in the present state of our science, be urged as 



nature. To call these iiitlueiices '■ natural selectiou," afFord a clue to determine tlieir relative degree of 

 is a misnomer which will not alter the conditions afhuity by a comparison with the pedigrees of well- 

 under which they may produce the desired results. known domesticated races. Again, if there were 

 Selection implies design ; the powers to which any such parallelism, the distinctive characteristics 

 Darwin refers the origin of species can design of dilTerent breeds should be akin to the differences 

 nothing. Selection is no doubt the essential princi- which exist between fossil species of earlier periods, 

 pie on which the raising of breeds is founded; and and tliose of the same genera now living. Now, 

 the subject of breeds is presented in its true light let any one fomiliar with the fossil species of the 

 by Darwin : but this process of raising breeds the genera Bos and Canis compare them with the 

 by the selection of favorable subjects is in no way races of our dogs and of our cattle, and he will 

 similar to that which regulates specific differences. find no correspondence whatever between them ; for 

 Nothing is more remote from the truth than the the simple reason, that they do not owe their exist- 

 attempted parallelism between the breeds of domes- ence to the same causes. It must therefore be 

 ticated animals and the species of wild ones. Did distinctly stated, that Darwin has failed to estab- 

 there exist such a parallelism as Darwin maintains, lish a connection between the mode of raising 

 the differences among the domesticated breeds should domesticated breeds and the cause or causes to 

 be akin to the differences among wild species ; and which wild animals owe their specific differences. 



