22 SPECIES NOT 



which is the favourite bird for making pies, 

 ;iml kept in almost every dove-cote. Mr. Darwin 

 says it is incredible that this should have pro- 

 duced the "sport," or that these different varieties 

 of pigeons were descended from aboriginal stocks, 

 having similar markings. 



I really do not think that this part of the 

 question is worth an argument. It only illus- 

 trates, even if Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of this 

 original descent from the blue rock were true, 

 that you may, by domestication and careful 

 crossing, produce varieties having but little re- 

 semblance to their original parent. I Jut the 

 organization, the structure, the functional life, 

 the sum-total, in fact, of what constitutes a 

 pigeon, does that differ in the two birds? Not 

 in the slightest. There is no divergence towards 

 anything else but a pigeon. And surely if this 

 crossing and domestication lias been going on 

 for thousands of years, (Mr. Darwin admits a 

 term of five thousand years,) we might in that 

 time have had the development of some abnor- 

 mity of structure, which would have shewn a 

 "divergence of form," tending either towards 

 the mammal above, or the reptile beneath it in 

 the scale of existence! Mr. Darwin, however, 

 conceals these mysterious transformations in the 

 dark, unknown, and fathomless past. 



But the question suggests another idea. If 

 not the slightest vestige of such a change has 

 been visible in the pigeon by "variation under 

 domestication," has there been any divergence 



