OBJE C T7ONS A GA INS T E VOL U TION. 183 



which Darwin and Lamarck, like ourselves, call 

 species, even when in general form, function, instinct 

 and habit, they resemble one another so closely 

 that their discrimination is a matter of difficulty. 

 Certainly the cause which maintains this order, this 

 constancy over the entire surface of the globe, is of 

 far greater importance than any mere particularity 

 affecting individual life, or the simple local existence 

 of a domestic race. 



" Now, this cause is simple and unique. Suppress 

 infecundity among different species; suppose that 

 the unions among wild species were to become in 

 every way fertile, and indefinitely so, as they are in 

 our dove-cotes, cow-houses and dog-kennels among 

 domestic races. And instantly what comes to pass? 

 Barriers separating species and genera are taken 

 away ; crosses are effected in all directions ; every, 

 where intermediate types make their appearance, 

 and everywhere existing distinctions are gradually 

 effaced. As for myself, I cannot see where the con- 

 fusion would end. Entire orders and probably even 

 classes would, after a few generations, present noth- 

 ing but a group of bastard forms of doubtful charac- 

 ters, irregularly allied and intercrossed, among which 

 disorder would go on increasing, thanks to the mix- 

 ture rendered more and more complete, and thanks 

 to atavism which would doubtless struggle for a long 

 time with direct heredity. This is not an imaginary 

 picture. Every reader, when asked what will be 

 produced by promiscuous unions among the one- 

 hundred-and-fifty races of pigeons recognized by 

 Darwin, and the one-hundred-and-eighty races of 



