228 Miscellaneous. 
type of the species, though under circumstances which would seem 
most unfavorable to the maintenance of the type. Whatever minor 
differences may exist between the products of this succession of 
generations, all are individual peculiarities, in no way connected with 
the essential features of the species, and therefore as transient as the 
individuals ; while the specific characters are for ever fixed. A single 
example will prove this. All the robins of North America now living 
have been for a short time in existence ; not one of them was alive a 
century ago when Linneus for ihe first time made known that 
species under the name of Turdus migratorius; and not one of the 
specimens observed by Linnzeus and his contemporaries was alive when 
the Pilgrims of the ‘ Mayflower’ first set foot upon the Rock of Ply- 
mouth. Where was the species at these different periods ? and where 
is it now? Certainly nowhere but in the individuals alive for the 
time being ; but not in any single one of them, for that one must be 
either a male or a female and not the species; not in a pair of them, 
for the species exhibits its peculiarities in its mode of breeding, in 
its nest, in its eggs, in its young, as much as in the appearance of 
the adult ; not in all the individuals of any particular district, for the 
geographical distribution of a species over its whole area forms also 
part of its specific characters*. A species is only known when its 
whole history has been ascertained ; and that history is recorded in 
the life of individuals through successive generations. The same 
kind of argument might be adduced from every existing species, and 
with still greater force by a reference to those species already known 
to the ancients. 
Let it not be objected that the individuals of successive generations 
have presented marked differences among themselves; for these 
differences, with all the monstrosities that may have occurred during 
these countless generations, have passed away with the individuals, 
as individual peculiarities, and the specific characteristics alone have 
been preserved, together with all that distinguishes the genus, the 
family, the order, the class, and the branch to which the individual 
belonged. Moreover, all this has been maintained through a succes- 
sion of repeated changes, amounting in each individual to the whole 
range of transformations through which an individual passes, from 
the time it is individualized as an egg, to the time it is itself capable 
of reproducing its kind, and perhaps with all the intervening phases 
of an unequal production of males and females, of sterile individuals, 
of dwarfs, of giants, &c. &c., during which there were millions of | 
chances for a deviation from the type. Does this not prove that 
while individuals are perishable, they transmit, generation after 
generation, all that is specific or generic, or, in one word, typical in 
* We are so much accustomed to see animals reproducing themselves, genera- 
tion after generation, that the fact no longer attracts our attention, and the mystery 
involved in it no longer excites our admiration. But there is certainly no more 
marvellous law in all Nature than that which regulates this regular succession. 
And upon this law the maintenance of species depends; for observation teaches 
us that all that is not individual peculiarity is unceasingly and integrally repro- 
duced, while all that constitutes individuality as such constantly disappears. 
