Permanence and Evohttion. 3 



mental and Domestic Poultry and Dovecot and 

 Aviary"). This gradual development of opinion 

 in the direction of a more and more thorough 

 polygenism seems to me to be right, at any 

 rate provisionally, during our present state of 

 knowledge, or rather ignorance. Further in- 

 vestigation would no doubt have led to an 

 increasing and still increasing recognition of 

 distinct permanent forms, if it had not been 

 that none of these investigators had a clear 

 idea of what is really meant when breeders are 

 said to improve or alter a breed. 



While public opinion was in this state, Dar- 

 win's " Origin of Species," and the simultaneous 

 labours of Wallace, took the scientific world 

 practically by storm. Since then (with the 

 exception of the remarkable protests of Sanson, 

 "Zootechnie Econome du Betail," as a poly- 

 genist, and of Wigand of Marburg, "Darwin- 

 ismus," virtually as an adherent of the old 

 notion of limited variability), though not all 



