28 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES a8 
all practical naturalists, whether zoologists, botar: 
ists, or paleontologists, to say if, m the vas: 
majority of cases, they know, or mean to affirm 
anything more of the group of animals or plant 
they so denominate than what has just been statec| 
Even the most decided advocates of the receive: 
doctrines respecting species admit this. ; 
ee apprehend,” says Professor Owen,' ‘‘ that few naturalis 
nowadays, in describing and proposing a name for what the. 
call ‘a new species,’ use that term to signify what was meant b 
it twenty or thirty years ago; that is, an originally distine 
creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive 
generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species no™ 
intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, fc: 
example, that the differences on which he founds the specifi, 
character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far ae 
observation has reached ; and that they are not due to domes. 
tication or to artificially saperitdteed external circumstances, ¢ 
to any outward influence within his cognizance ; that the cg 
is wild, or is such as it appears by Nature.” 
If we consider, in fact, that by far the langes 
proportion of recorded existing species are know) 
only by the study of their skins, or bones, or othe 
lifeless exuvie ; that we are acquainted with none 
or next to none, of their physiological peculiarities 
heehee those which can be deduced from ae 
_structure, or are open to cursory observation ; anc 
‘that we cannot hope to learn more of any of those 
extinct forms of life which now constitute ne 
inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora anc. 
1 **On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs ” 
Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858. | 
| 
