236 DAKWINIANISM. 



sheep. Sheep, it is true, cart exist in almost every 

 country ; still it is equally true that " climate and soil 

 fix limits." " The climate and the condition of existence 

 which it induces, affect, with irresistible force, the struc- 

 ture, health, and reproductiveness of men and animals 

 from the equator to the pole." 



Now, such views as these cannot but have been 

 perfectly familiar to Mr. Darwin. Nay, are not the 

 principles they concern to be included among the most 

 salient expedients and resources of the very breeders 

 to whose operations he makes such signal reference in 

 support of his own ? The strange thing, then, is that 

 he came, as it were, to dislike conditions, and even 

 almost to grudge them any part whatever in the business 

 proper of his enterprise. We must consider, however, 

 that so far as conditions were conceived to be active in 

 the production of adaptations, it was not for him to 

 admit them against, in the same reference, a theory of 

 his own. Not that he could admit them, in that special 

 reference, as he seems to say, even on general grounds. 

 To talk of climate or Lamarck in the same breath with 

 adaptations was to him futile; or again (ii. 29), "That 

 climate, food, etc., should make a Pediculus formed to 

 climb hair, or woodpecker to climb trees," was " an 

 absurd notion." Still he might have admitted the 

 influence of conditions in the production of changed 

 forms even as his favourite breeders did. That he did 

 not do so will be found to prove itself in the Life and 

 Letters even scores of times as will be matter of express 

 reference further on. It may be, as we say, that it was 

 in the interest of his own theory that he was averse to 

 conditions : he would not have them diminish its glory, 

 he says once to Hooker (ii. 390). In fact, it was to the 

 provisions of his own theory that he attributed the 

 production of the appearance of design : " An organic 



