ZEBRAS, HORSES, AND HYBRIDS 



This matchless horse 

 Is the true pearl of every caravan. 



SIR F. H. DOYLE. 



THE views and writings of Darwin have influenced 

 in an unexpected way the nature of the work carried 

 on by biological investigators during the past fifty 

 years. To a great extent, whilst generally holding 

 the doctrines he held, they have forsaken his methods 

 of inquiry. 



If animals and plants have arrived at their present 

 state by descent with modification from simpler forms, 

 it ought to be possible by careful searching to trace 

 the line of ancestry ; and it is this fascinating but 

 frequently futile pursuit which has dominated the 

 minds of many of our ablest zoologists for the last 

 thirty years. To such an extent has this pedigree- 

 hunting been carried that there is scarcely a group of 

 invertebrates from which the vertebrates have not been 

 theoretically derived ; and one of the ablest of our 

 physiologists has used his great powers in the attempt 

 to trace the origin of the backboned animals from a 

 spider-like creature, and has exercised his ingenuity 

 in a plausible but unconvincing effort to equate the 

 organs of a king-crab with those of a lamprey. This 

 appeal to comparative anatomy and the consequent 

 neglect of living animals and their habits are no doubt 

 partly due to the influence of Huxley, Darwin's most 

 brilliant follower and exponent. He had the engineer's 



73 



