Permanence and Evolution. 57 



would like to know something about the buck, 

 and the ancestors of both sides. 



But, speaking seriously, I must say that 

 the whole story is probably a myth, like 

 similar ones about the Andaman pig, the 

 North American fox, and other such "myths 

 of observation," as Burnet Tylor would call 

 them. Granting that the first colonists turned 

 out rabbits, it is impossible to know that 

 there were none before, nor for the matter of 

 that, that none were introduced afterwards, 

 and granted that the Porto Santo rabbit is 

 the descendant of introduced animals, in the 

 words of Darwin as to the Falkland Islands, 

 " how the rabbits were coloured (or otherwise 

 * characterised ') which were turned out is not 

 known." On referring to " R. Major's Dis- 

 coveries of Prince Henry the Navigator," the 

 latest and best authority on these Portuguese 

 voyages, I find p. 77 that Zarco " had in a cage 

 a pregnant rabbit . . . which littered during the 



