niSTOKICAL SKETCH. H 



tend to varj- iu some deforce, and, secondly, that agriculturists improve their 

 domesticated animals by selection ; and then, he adds, but what is done in 

 this latter case " by art seems to be done with equal cdicacy, though more 

 slowly, by Nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the 

 country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which 

 would occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the middle 

 regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear 

 the diseases of the country. This race would consequently multiply, while 

 the others would decrease — not only from their inability to sustain the at- 

 tacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more 

 vigorous neighbors. The color of this vigorous race, I take for granted, 

 from what has been already said, would be dark. But, tlie same disposition 

 to form varieties still existing, a darker and a darker race would in the 

 course of time occur ; and, as the darkest would be the best fitted for the 

 climate, this would at length become the most prevalent, if not the only, 

 race in the particular country in which it had originated." lie then extends 

 these same views to the white inhabitants of colder climates. I am in- 

 debted to Mr. Rowley, of the Uniteil States, for having called my attention, 

 through Mr. Brace, to the above passage in Dr. Wells's work. 



The lion, and Kcv. W. Herbert, afterward Dean of Manclicster, in the 

 fourth volume of the " Horticultural Transactions," 1822, and in his work on 

 the " Amaryllidacere " (1S37, pp. 10, 339), declares that " horticultural exper- 

 iments have established, beyond the possibility of refutation, that botanical 

 species are only a higher and more permanent class of varieties." He ex- 

 tends the same view to animals. The dean believes that single species of 

 each genus were created in an originally highly plastic condition, and that 

 these have produced, chiefly by intercrossing, but likewise by variation, all 

 ovir existing species. 



In 182G Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph in his well-known 

 paper {Edinhtirgh Philosoplikal Journal, vol. xiv., p. 283) on the Spongilla, 

 clearly declares his belief that species are descended from other species, and 

 that they become improved in the course of modification. This same view 

 was given in his 55th Lecture, published in the Lancet in 1834. 



In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on "Xaval Timl)er and 

 Arboriculture," in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin of 

 species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by ^Ir. Wallace and 

 myself in the Lluncan Journal, and as that enlarged in the present volume. 

 Unfortunately, the view was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered 

 passages in an Appendix to a work on adiflcrcnt sul)jeet, so that it remained 

 unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew attention to it in the Gardcncr^a 

 Chronicle, on April Y, 1860. The difTcrcnecs of Mr. JIatthew's view from 

 mine arc not of much importance ; he seems to consider that the world was 



