78 DIFFICULTIES [CHAP. HI. 



supported by the strongest proofs, and which will bear 

 the most searching test. When a chemist announces to 

 the world a new discovery, a new mode of combining or 

 separating material atoms, his declaration is listened to, 

 and other chemists attempt to verify his facts. If they 

 can succeed in doing what he asserts that he has done, 

 they are sure he is right; if they cannot they believe 

 him to be wrong, and to have been deceived by some 

 error in his observations. 



Now we have in our aviaries certain curious forms of 

 Pigeons, very remarkable and very unlike each other. 

 We are told they are all derived by selection, and com- 

 bination, and special modes of rearing (by soins parti- 

 cullers assidus very favourite words of Temminck), from 

 another race as different from them as they are from 

 each other. Proofs of this transmutation are as much 

 wanted, as they are of the chemist's solitary experiment, 

 till it is repeated. We demand, therefore, to have the 

 Zoological experiment repeated : let man create (we 

 hardly dare use the expression) a truly new species, or 

 race, or breed of Pigeons, quite unlike those now existing, 

 by the stated modes of combination and selection, or in 

 any other way. The London Zoological Society, with 

 every means which wealth, power, and talent can com- 

 mand, has not done it. The experiment cannot be veri- 

 fied. The conclusions have been arrived at too hastily. 



Mr. Yarrell, to whom British Zoology owes so much, 

 both for the valuable information he has imparted to 

 the world, and the elegant form in which it has been 

 given he also, unfortunately, has declined to include 

 in his work figures, or lengthened descriptions, of those 

 birds which exist in this country only in a domesticated 

 state. Scientific naturalists all seem to avoid the task 



