162 INTRODUCTION. 



and, at last, see the monad-sprung Giraffe : some wished to fly ; in pro- 

 cess of time, wings were obtained : some, for ages, contented themselves 

 with climbing trees, and leaping from branch to branch ; and, by dint of 

 striving to excel their first endeavours, the skin of their sides became extended 

 into the form of a parachute : finally, thus, in process of time, came the 

 world tenanted with all living things, Man being the ultimatum. Philo- 

 sophia " inepta, res ineptior nulla est." BufTon, and even Linnaeus, 

 denied the durability of species, and regarded the races of animals now 

 extant as the diverging products of a given number of original stocks ; 

 the descendants of which, intermingling together, produced blended and 

 degenerate races ; and so on, till, at length, the mixed intercourse of 

 those races ceased to produce a fertile progeny ; the extent to which 

 the production of fresh varieties, or species, can be carried on, being 

 determinate. Buffon, indeed, who pushed this theory to its extreme, 

 regarded all allied species as the descendants of a common stock, the 

 model of the race ; varied in their subordinate characters by the in- 

 fluences of climate, diet, and other causes ; and, by their intermixture, 

 producing other varieties. Hence, at some period, the primitive stock 

 only existed ; then sprang from those a race of degenerate descendants ; 

 and, ultimately, arose the products resulting from the mixture of these 

 descendants. Time has, to a great degree, obliterated the primitive con- 

 dition of the common type, to which the allied species are to be referred ; 

 yet, still, this type, or stem, is to be discerned, as the source from which these 

 off-sets have branched out. In fact, all allied species are mere varieties 

 of one common stock. Where a single species, as Man, forms the sole 

 example of the genus, the stock has been continued in a direct line, 

 without collateral branches, as in the case of the Elephant (which he 

 regarded as a single species), the Rhinoceros, the Hippopotamus, the 

 Giraffe, the Camel, &c. But, among the smaller and more prolific races, 

 the offsets of the common stock were numerous in proportion to their 

 fertility. According to these principles, Buffon reduced all the Mammalia, 

 with which he was acquainted, to about thirty-eight families ; each family 

 originally consisting, not of distinct species, but of varied, or modified, de- 

 scendants of a common parentage. This theory, however specious it may 

 be, is utterly untenable ; climate, food, and other contingencies may, 

 indeed, and do, produce certain effects ; they influence size, strength, 

 beauty of proportion, length of ears, or tail, or the fulness of the fur ; 

 but they affect not the anatomical structure of species ; they alter not the 

 characters of the internal organs, or the structure of the teeth. 



The skull of the Chimpanzee, the proportionate length of its arms, the 

 presence of the ligamentum teres of the hip-joint, and the form of its 

 hands and feet, distinguish it, and ever will distinguish it, from its ally, the 

 Orang ; nor is it possible that these two could have descended from the 



