TRANSMUTABLE. 25 



CHAPTER II. 



LET us now look a little closer into some of 

 the arguments by which Mr. Darwin's ingenious 

 hypothesis has been built up. 



The work is divided into fourteen chapters, 

 and we are told it is only an abstract of a 

 much larger book, to be published hereafter. The 

 first chapter treats of "Variation under Domes- 

 tication." The causes of variability Mr. Darwin 

 considers, (after alluding to the difference of life 

 and habits, and excess of food,) to be an alter- 

 ation in the reproductive elements, causing a 

 difficulty in inducing the animal to breed in 

 confinement. "Nothing is more easy than to 

 tame an animal, and few things more difficult 

 than to get it to breed freely under confinement 

 even in the many cases where the male and female 

 unite." And he illustrates this as follows: 

 "Carnivorous animals, even from the tropics, breed 

 in this country pretty freely under confinement, 

 with the exception of the plantigrades, or bear 

 family ; whereas carnivorous birds, with the rarest 

 exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs." 



With singular inconsistency Mr. Darwin admits 

 in the next passage, "When on the one hand 

 we see domesticated animals and plants, though 

 often weak and sickly, yet breeding quite freely 

 under confinement; and on the other hand, when 



