REV. JOHN GERARD, F.L.S., ON SPECIES AND THEIR ORIGIN. 137 
of dogs, from which all the others have sprung. He supposes that 
for this ancestral pair and all the multitude of their descendants 
throughout the ages, the law of descent is that “Like produces 
Like” and they are all of one and the same species. Darwin does 
not, however, regard this ancestral pair as the final ancestor—he 
imagines that it had itself an ancestor. And he arbitrarily and 
inconsistently affirms that the law of descent undergoes a 
remarkable change, so that descendant and ancestor are of different 
species. To assume, without evidence, that the law of descent 
changes in this strange manner, is a procedure born not of science 
but of imagination, and it may safely be said that a supposition so 
violent would never have been made but for the exigencies of 4 
theory. 
I would congratulate the able author of this paper upon the 
felicity of his comparison—of course only analogical—between a 
species and a regiment. 
We entirely concur with him as to “the controlling power which 
sets and keeps” the species pattern, recognising that the pattern 
finds its sole explanation in ‘“‘an infinite cause for which, to us, the 
word mind is the least inadequate and misleading of symbols.” 
JOHN ScHwWARTZ, Esy.—I would suggest that the definition of 
species quoted from Mr. Wallace as limited to those which can by 
mutual fecundation produce fertile individuals, is now held by 
practically all the younger generation of biologists; and that the 
views quoted from Mr. Mivart and Mr. G. H. Lewis are dealing 
with the matter from a metaphysical or philosophical rather than 
from a strictly natural science standpoint. As our lecturer states, 
the vital question is: How can species be constituted? He appears 
to suggest, on p. 129, that the unwillingness to accept mind as over- 
ruling all, has been the reason for adopting the evolutionary theory 
of the origin of species ; this, I think, is incorrect. Biologists have 
frankly adopted the empirical view of natural science, and have 
practically unanimously accepted the evolutionary theory as estab- 
lished by historical facts; quite independently of any further 
philosophical or metaphysical views which they may individually 
hold, as to whether an over-ruling mind has planned it all, or 
whether it is the result of a fortuitous concourse of forces or atoms ; 
and those definitely holding the latter views are, I think, a minority. 
Darwin was in no way dogmatic about variation and the precise 
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