Notices of New Books. 7597 



Artificial variations froiu the normal type, as domestic varieties, 

 have generally less stamina and power of persistence than their native 

 parent; for example, the most artificial forms of florists' flowers, or 

 those that are most " highly bred " (independently of the question of 

 sterile double flowers, through the abortion of the reproductive organs), 

 produce less seed, and are altogether more difficult to propagate, than 

 the less artificial varieties. This is especially evident to the cultivrxtors 

 of the fancy varieties of the scarlet Pelargonium ; the "golden chain," 

 " flower of the day," " Alma," and other highly-bred fancy varieties 

 being much less easy to strike and keep alive than the common scarlet, 

 more closely resembling the original species. Again : breeders of stock 

 know how frequently their efforts to produce certain artificial qualities 

 are frustrated by the individuals leading to them ceasing to breed. 

 If this holds good with variations under nature — and the two, 

 according to Mr. Darwin, are parallel, for he illustrates variation 

 under nature by facts of variation under domestication — the tendency 

 must certainly be to the perpetuation of the species in its most 

 normal descendants ; and a principle is established that variations, as 

 a rule, do not tend to the well-being of the possessors, or give them 

 any advantage in the struggle for existence. The fact has a variety 

 of bearings : lake, for example, the case of the colour of certain ani- 

 mals resembling the colour of their habitats, which most naturalists 

 agree is a provision to guard them from the too easy assaults of their 

 predatory neighbours ; any deviation from the normal colour — as a 

 little lighter or a little darker tint, or the presence even of a white 

 feather — would surely mark them as the first to be assailed by ani- 

 mals of prey, and tend to perpetuate the dominion of the usual colour 

 of fur or plumage. 



The greatest difficulty we see in Mr. Darwin's theory is the disposal 

 of the infinite number of intermediate forms which must necessarily 

 be the result of the production of species by small steps of variation j 

 it must be by some absolute law, for those cases in which a want of 

 definition between species occur are so few that they at once present 

 themselves to us as exceptional, and we must look for an almost uni- 

 versally pervading operation tending to the extinction of intermediate 

 forms. Mr. Darwin tells us that not only the variation but the pro- 

 perty of variation is inherited, and if this be true why should it be set 

 in motion through a number of generations sufficient to accumulate 

 the amount of difference dividing species and then utterly cease ? It 

 commences with an individual variation, is prolonged by means of 

 slight individual variations, every individual partaking of the properly 



