100 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



which mark the different varieties of each species ; 

 the other school declaring that the variability is in- 

 definite, and that all animal forms may have arisen 

 from successive modifications of a very few types, 

 or even of one type. 



Now I would call your attention to one point in 

 this discussion which ought to be remembered when 

 antagonists are growing angry and bitter over the 

 subject; it is, that both these opinions are necessa- 

 rily hypothetical there can be nothing like posi- 

 tive proof adduced on either side. The utmost that 

 either hypothesis can claim is that it is more con- 

 sistent with general analogies, and better serves to 

 bring our knowledge of various points into har- 

 mony. Neither of them can claim to be a truth 

 which warrants dogmatic decision. 



Of these two hypotheses, the first has the weight 

 and majority of authoritative adherents. It de- 

 clares that all the different kinds of bats, for exam- 

 ple, were distinct and independent creations, each 

 species being originally what we see it to be now, 

 and what it will continue to be as long as it ex- 

 ists : lions, panthers, pumas, leopards, tigers, jagu- 

 ars, ocelots, and domestic cats being so many origi- 

 nal stocks, and not so many divergent forms of one orig- 

 inal stock. The second hypothesis declares that all 

 these kinds of cats represent divergencies of the 

 original stock, precisely as the varieties of each kind 

 represent the divergencies of each species. It is 

 true that each species, when once formed, only ad- 



