INTRODUCTION. 99 
about four thousand years, or of fifteen hundred, 
perhaps nearly two thousand, generations.* If it 
were said that man alone furnishes circumstances 
partially similar, we would find that they would 
be adverse to the devised conclusions; for if there 
be but one original species of man, although it has 
undergone all and more vicissitudes than his dogs, 
we do not find his physical characters so greatly 
varied, increased, or diminished, in the sense of 
smelling, in the mass of the brain in growth, in the 
form of the ears, and quality or quantity of hair, as 
in the dog, when assumed to arise from a single 
stock. And if it were said that there are more than 
one original species of man, then we cannot deny 
the conclusion, that as these are known, when mixed, 
to produce prolific offspring, they would furnish a 
proof that separate species of canines may be in the 
same condition. Still, however, the mule breed 
between dog and wolf, reared by Count de Buffon, 
through four generations, leave no satisfactory re- 
sult; and M. F’. Cuvier, in later experiments, attests 
that the procreative power in the descending line 
becomes less and less, leading to early sterility and 
extinction. The term mule breed, used by Buffon, 
be it observed, is only a repetition of the words of 
the ancients, and shows in all the pre-supposition 
that the species were distinct. Besides, if this breed 
* Mr. Hodgson, however, also claims the intervention of 
moral qualifications in his account of Capra tharal, as being 
_ bolder and livelier than his Ovis nahoor, in opposition to the 
conclusions of Colonel H. Smith’s account of sheep. 
