TIME AND LIFE 139 



taking another handful of feathers from Mr. Darwin ; 

 endeavouring to point out in a few words, in fact, what, 

 as I gather from the perusal of his book, his doctrines 

 really are, and on what sort of basis they rest. And I 

 do this the more willingly, as I observe that already the 

 hastier sort of critics have begun, not to review my friend's 

 book, but to howl over it in a manner which must tend 

 greatly to distract the public mind. 



No one will be better satisfied than I to see Mr. Darwin's 

 book refuted, if any person be competent to perform 

 that feat ; but 1 would suggest that refutation is retarded, 

 not aided, by mere sarcastic misrepresentation. Every 

 one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned pigeon- 

 fancier, or " pomologist," must have been struck by the 

 extreme modifi ability or plasticity of those kinds of animals 

 and plants which have been subjected to such artificial 

 conditions as are imposed by domestication. Breeds of 

 dogs are more different from one another than are the dog 

 and the wolf ; and the purely artificial races of pigeons, 

 if their origin were unknown, would most assuredly be 

 reckoned by naturalists as distinct species and even genera. 



These breeds are always produced in the same way. The 

 breeder selects a pair, one or other, or both, of which 

 present an indication of the peculiarity he wishes to per- 

 petuate, and then selects from the offspring of them those 

 which are most characteristic, rejecting the others. From 

 the selected offspring he breeds again, and, taking the 

 same precautions as before, repeats the process until he 

 has obtained the precise degree of divergence from the 

 primitive type at which he aimed. 



If he now breeds from the variety thus established for 

 some generations, taking care always to keep the stock 

 pure, the tendency to produce this particular variety 

 becomes more and more strongly hereditary ; and it does 

 not appear that there is any limit to the persistency of the 

 race thus developed. 



Men like Lamarck, apprehending these facts, and know- 

 ing that varieties comparable to those produced by the 

 breeder are abundantly found in nature, and finding it 

 impossible to discriminate in some cases between varieties 

 and true species, could hardly fail to divine the possibility 

 that species even the most distinct were, after all, only 

 exceedingly persistent varieties, and that they had arisen 

 by the modification of some common stock, just as it is 



