96 ACALEPHS IN GENERAL. Part I. 



transient as the individuals ; ^vhile the specific characters are for ever fixed. A 

 single example will prove this. All the robins of North America now living have 

 been for a short time in existence ; not one of them was alive a century ago, 

 when LinnauTS for the first time made known that species, under the name of 

 Turdus migratorius, and not one of the specimens observed by Linnaeus and his 

 contemporaries was alive when the pilgrims of the Mayflower first set foot upon the 

 rock of Plymouth. Where was the species at these different periods, and where 

 is it now ? Certainly nowhere but in the individuals alive for the time being ; 

 but not in any single one of them, for that one must be either a male or a 

 female, and not the species ; not in a pair of them, for the species exhibits its 

 peculiarities in its mode of breeding, in its nest, in its eggs, in its ^oung, as 

 much as in the appearance of the adult ; not in all the individuals of any imv- 

 ticnlar district, for the geographical distribution of a species over its whole area 

 forms also part of its specific characters.^ A species is only known when its 

 whole history has been ascertained, and that history is recorded in the life of 

 individuals through successive generations. The same kind of argument might be 

 adduced from every existing species, and with still greater force, by a reference 

 to those species already known to the ancients. 



Let it not be objected, that the individuals of successive generations have j^re- 

 sented marked diflerences among themselves ; for these difterences, with all the 

 monstrosities that may have occiu^-ed during these countless generations, have 

 passed away with the individuals as individual peculiarities, and the specific char- 

 acteristics alone have Iteen preserved, together w'ith all that distinguishes the genus, 

 the flimily, the order, the class, and the branch to Avliich the individual belonged. 

 And all this has been maintained through a succession of repeated changes, 

 amounting in each indi\idual to the whole range of transformations through wliich 

 an individual passes, from the time it is individualized as an egg to the time it 

 is itself capable of reproducing its kind, and, j^erhaps, wdtli all the intervening 

 phases of an unequal production of males and females, of sterile individuals, of 

 dwarfs, of giants, etc., etc., during which there were millions of chances for a 

 deviation from the type. Does this not prove, that, while individuals are perish- 

 able, they transmit, generation after generation, all that is specific or generic, or, 

 in one word, bjincul in them, to the exclusion of every individual ixxnliarilu, which 



* We are .so nuich accustomed to see animals tliis regular succession. And iijion this law the 



reproducing themselves generation after generation, maintenance of species dei)ends ; for observation 



that the fact no longer attracts onr attention, and teaches ns that all that is not individual peculi- 



the mystery involved in it no longer excites our arity is unceasingly and integrally reproduced, Avhile 



iulmiration. But there is certainly no more mar- all that constitutes individuality, as such, constantly 



vellous law in all nature than that which regulates disa}ipears. 



