V.] SPECIFIC STABILITY. 141 



Mr. Darwin objects to the notion that there is any 

 peculiar sterility imposed to check specific intermixture 

 and change, saying, 1 " To grant to species the special power 

 of producing hybrids, and then to stop their further pro- 

 pagation by different degrees of sterility, not strictly related 

 to the facility of the first union between their parents, 

 seems a strange arrangement." 



But this only amounts to saying that the author himself 

 would not have so acted had he been the Creator. A 

 " strange arrangement " must be admitted anyhow, and 

 all who acknowledge teleology at all, must admit that the 

 strange arrangement was designed. Mr. Darwin says, 

 as to the sterility of species, that the cause lies exclu- 

 sively in their sexual constitution ; but all that need be 

 affirmed is that sterility is brought about somehow, and 

 it is undeniable that " crossing " is checked. All that 

 is contended for is that there is a bar to the intermixture 

 of species, but not of breeds ; and if the conditions of 

 the generative products are that bar, it is enough for 

 the argument, no special kind of barring action . being 

 contended for. 



He, however, attempts to account for the modification 

 of ^the sexual products of species as compared with those 

 of varieties, by the exposure of the former to more uniform 

 conditions during longer periods of time than those to 

 which varieties are exposed ; and that as wild animals, 

 when captured, are often rendered sterile by captivity, so 

 the influence of union with another species may produce 

 a similar effect. It seems to the author an unwarrantable 

 assumption that a cross with what, on the Darwinian 

 theory, can only be a slightly diverging descendant from a 



1 ''Origin of Species," 5th edition, 1869, p. 314. 



