28 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES n 



all practical naturalists, whether zoologists, botan- 

 ists, or palaeontologists, to say if, in the vast 

 majority of cases, they know, or mean to affirm, 

 anything more of the group of animals or plants 

 they so denominate than what has just been stated. 

 Even the most decided advocates of the received 

 doctrines respecting species admit this. 



" I apprehend," says Professor Owen, 1 "that few naturalists 

 nowadays, in describing and proposing a name for what they 

 call ' a new species,' use that term to signify what was meant by 

 it twenty or thirty years ago ; that is, an originally distinct 

 creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive 

 generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now 

 intends to state no more than he actually knows ; as, for 

 example, that the differences on which he founds the specific 

 character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as 

 observation has reached ; and that they are not due to domes- 

 tication or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or 

 to any outward influence within his cognizance ; that the species 

 is wild, or is such as it appears by Nature." 



If we consider, in fact, that by far the largest 

 proportion of recorded existing species are known 

 only by the study of their skins, or bones, or other 

 lifeless exuviaa ; that we are acquainted with none, 

 or next to none, of their physiological peculiarities, 

 beyond those which can be deduced from their 

 structure, or are open to cursory observation ; and 

 that we cannot hope to learn more of any of those 

 extinct forms of life which now constitute no 

 inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora and 



1 " On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs " ; 

 Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858. 



