142 EVOLU TION A ND D O GMA . 



and immutable. With Linnaeus, they declare species 

 and genera to be the work of nature, 1 and contend 

 that the ingenuity of man is incompetent to produce 

 anything beyond races and varieties. 



The spider, they will have it, still spins its web 

 as it did in the time of Aristotle, and the ant col- 

 lects its store of provisions in precisely the same 

 manner as was its wont in the days of Solomon. 



For the sake of brevity, I shall limit myself to 

 the consideration of three of the chief objections 

 urged by anti-evolutionists against the theory of 

 derivation. The first refers to the alleged ab- 

 sence of all evidence regarding the transmutation of 



hence, he continues, " Plus que jamais je renouvelle mon appel, 

 je declare ma bonne volonte 1 , assurant que je ne souffrirais en 

 aucune fajon de me trouver vaincu. Avant pour me consoler 

 la perspective d'un progres scientifique dont Timportance serait 

 immense, c'est de toutes les forces de mon ame que je jette cette 

 parole a tous les amis des sciences naturelles: Montrez-nous 

 une fois Vexemple de la transformation d'une especeT 



111 Nature opus semper est species et genus ; cultune ssepius 

 varietas; artis et naturae classis et ordo." Elsewhere he writes 

 " Classes and orders are the inventions of science, species the 

 work of nature Classis et ordo est sapientia?, species naturae 

 opus." In his " Philosophia Botanica," 59, he declares that 

 genera, like species, are primordial creations. " Genus omne est 

 naturale, in primordio tale creatum." 



In contradistinction, however, to the above dogmatic state- 

 ments, Linnaeus, as we have already learned, was not averse 

 from the idea that certain closely allied species had a common 

 origin and were the products of extended variation or hybridiza- 

 tion. Such species he called " the daughters of time " tem- 

 poris filiae. He seemed also to have a presentiment that the 

 day would come when botanists would regard all the species of 

 the same genera as descended from a common parent " Tot 

 species dici congeneres quot eadem matre sint progenitas," he 

 writes in vol. VI, p. 12, of the "Amcenitates Academical." Nay, 

 more, in this same work, vol. I, p. 70, he suggests that not only 

 species but even genera, may have arisen from hybrids. '' Novas 

 species immo et genera, ex copula diversarum specierum in 

 regno vegetabili oriri." 



