THE WHITE CHINA GOOSE. 445 



old as the hills some of them ; older than the English Chan- 

 nel, and have neither made a sudden drop from the clouds in 

 these latter days, nor have been recently compounded, like 

 Frankenstein's monster, from the members of defunct creatures, 

 nor yet electrified into life in a pickle jar, like Mr. Cross's 

 mites. Milton's noble lines are no longer applicable : 



" Meanwhile, the tepid caves, and fens, and shores, 

 Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed 

 Their callow young ; but feathered soon and fledge, 

 They summed their pens ; and, soaring the air sublime, 

 With clang despised the ground. * * And straight the earth, 

 Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth 

 Numerous living creatures, perfect forms 

 Limbed and full-grown ; out of the ground uprose, 

 As from his lair, the wild beast where he wons 

 In forest wild, in -thicket, brake,, or den." 



If such views be correct, it will follow that those who are 

 searching for the wild originals of many of our domestic ani- 

 mals, are altogether pursuing a wrong scent. They might just 

 as well search for the wild original of the Mammoth or the 

 Dodo. It is an assumption, unsupported by any proof, to fix 

 upon the wild creature that nearest resembles any given tame 

 one, and to say, " Here is the wild original ; the differences 

 which we see have been produced by time and domestication " 

 or, if there is nothing wild coming within a moderate approach to 

 it, to say, as of the Common Goose, " It is a combination of three 

 or four other species." This is surely not philosophical reason- 

 ing ; it is a begging of the question, which would not be ad- 

 mitted in the exact sciences. What a daring leap at a con- 

 clusion it is, to get from the Asiatic Argali, the American 

 Argali, or the Corsican Mouflon, any or all of them, to the 

 Sheep, at a single vault ! Such ratiocination is like the knight's 

 move on the chess-board, hither and thither, but never straight 

 forward. Nor has the wide gulf between Cocks and Hens and 



