LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 81 



integuments, colour, and other external characters, subject 

 in each case to limits which they cannot transcend. The 

 despotic folly of a Prussian monarch might breed, as well as 

 steal, gigantic soldiers for his guards ; but could not change 

 in a single particular the anatomical characters of the men 

 thus forced into his ranks. We have before referred to the 

 Dog. With the exception of a slight change in the bones of 

 the hind foot in some breeds (the maximum of variation, as 

 far as we yet know) the bony structure and internal organs 

 are the same under all its numerous varieties. The teeth, 

 now so important a diagnostic mark, are alike in all. Its 

 animal instincts, though modified, or often suppressed, 

 by human culture, are essentially the same throughout ; and 

 the dog himself well knows his own species, whatever varieties 

 it assumes. It is needless to cite other instances, as they all 

 correspond in their bearing on the question before us. 



A point upon which stress has been laid by the disciples 

 of Lamarck is the close approximation of the Anthropoid 

 Apes to man; warranting, according to them, the notion 

 that the lower may here have passed into the higher grade 

 of being. Admitting the likeness to its fullest extent (the 

 Simla quam similis ! of the old Latin poet), it is still but the 

 mark of closest proximity in the scale. The evidence, either 

 anatomical or of other kind, as we have already mentioned 

 in speaking of these creatures, goes not a step further. 

 And against the transmutation hypothesis here, we have the 

 fact stated by Owen, that certain of the osteological differ- 

 ences between these animals and man are so characterised as 

 to be insusceptible, from any known external causes, of the 

 changes required to accomplish such transmutation. 



The arguments we have now been using for the permanence 

 of species will be familiar to many of our readers. But there 

 are others to whom the question has come only in a crude 

 and general way ; and to these it is well, seeing how deeply 



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