OBJE C TIONS A GA INS T E VOL UTION. l9l 



of organisms that require to be designated by a 

 special term. Evolutionists are willing to accept the 

 term " species," provided, however, it be understood 

 that this term does not imply specific immutability 

 during all time. That species may be immutable 

 during a relatively brief period, or during the time 

 it may have been possible to study them, evolution- 

 ists are ready to concede, but they decline to admit, 

 that because certain forms are known to have been 

 permanent for a limited period, they must, therefore, 

 have been immutable during an indefinite past time. 

 This indefinite immutability is what De Quatrefages 

 and his school demand, but it is, as is obvious, a 

 simple begging of the question. 



Even more than a third of a century back, the 

 eminent comparative anatomist, Richard Owen, al- 

 though never in sympathy with the dominant school 

 of contemporary Evolution, felt himself constrained 

 to write regarding species as follows : " I apprehend 

 that few naturalists, nowadays, in describing and 

 proposing a name for what they call a new species, 

 use that term to signify what was meant by it thirty 

 years ago ; that is, an originally distinct creation, 

 maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive 

 generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new 

 species now intends to state no more than he actu- 

 ally knows, as, for example, that the differences on 

 which he founds the specific characters are constant 

 in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation 

 has reached ; and that they are not due to domesti- 

 cation, or to artificially superinduced circumstances, 

 or to any outward influence within his cognizance ; 



