CHAPTER IX. 



CHARACTERS AS ADAPTIVE AND SPECIFIC 

 (continued). 



IT must have appeared strange that hitherto I 

 should have failed to distinguish between " true 

 species " and merely " climatic varieties." But it 

 will conduce to clearness of discussion if we con- 

 sider our subject point by point. Therefore, having 

 now given a fair statement of the facts of climatic 

 variation, I propose to deal with their theoretical 

 implications especially as regards the distinction 

 which naturalists are in the habit of drawing 

 between them and so-called true species. 



First of all, then, what is this distinction ? Take, 

 for example, the case of the Porto Santo rabbits. 

 To almost every naturalist who reads what has been 

 said touching these animals, it will have appeared 

 that the connexion in which they are adduced is 

 wholly irrelevant to the question in debate. For, 

 it will be said that the very fact of the seemingly 

 specific differentiation of these animals having proved 

 to be illusory when some of them were restored to 

 their ancestral conditions, is proof that their peculiar 

 characters are not specific characters ; but only what 

 Mr. Wallace would term " individual characters," or 



