
Fuby v3, 1871] 
NATURE 
201 

perience and fund of illustration possessed by Mr. Darwin, and I 
have to say that I am unconvinced by the arguments he has 
adduced. With the transparent frankness of all his writings, 
Mr. Darwin, in one of the references to which he has commended 
me, has collected a very large number of examples that tell very 
strongly against him, and which I again commend to Mr. Wallace. 
I refer to the 18th chapter of Mr. Darwin’s book on the “ Varia- 
tion of Plants and Animals under Domestication,” and especially 
to that portion beginning on page 149. In speaking of animals, 
he says :—‘‘ The most remarkable cases, however, are afforded 
by animals kept in their native country, which, though perfectly 
tamed, quite healthy, and allowed some freedom, are absolutely 
incapable of breeding. Rengger, who in Paraguay particularly 
attended to this subject, specifies six quadrupeds inthis condi- 
tion, and he mentions two or three others which most rarely 
breed. Mr. Bates, in his admirable work on the Amazons, 
strongly insists on similar cases, and he remarks that the fact of 
thoroughly tamed wild animals and birds not breeding when 
kept by the Indians, cannot be wholly accounted for by their 
negligence or indifference, for the turkey is valued by them, and 
the fowl has been adopted by the remotest tribes. In almost 
every part of the world, for instance, in the interior of Africa, 
and in several of the Polynesian islands, the natives are ex- 
tremely fond of taming the indigenous quadrupeds and birds, 
but they rarely or never succeed in getting them to breed,” and 
so on, through sixty pages of closely-packed examples. And what 
is Mr. Darwin’s commentary on these facts? I again quote page 
158 :—“‘ We feel at first naturally inclined to attribute the result 
to loss of health, or at least to loss of vigour, but this view can 
hardly be admitted when we reflect how healthy, long-lived, and 
vigorous many animals are under captivity, such as parrots and 
hawks when used for hawking, chetahs when used for hunting, and 
elephants. The reproductive organs themselves are not diseased, 
and the diseases from which animals in menageries usually perish 
are not those which in any way affect their fertility. No domestic 
animal is more subject to disease than the sheep, yet it is remark- 
ably fertile.’ Mr. Darwin, with equal clearness and conclusive- 
ness, decides that this sterility cannot be duz2 to a failure of 
sexual instincts, change of climate or of food, or want of food or 
exercise ; and he concludes that certain changes of habits and of 
life affect in an inexplicable manner the powers of reproduction. 
But what is true of man it is reasonable to suppose is true of all 
these instances—namely, that it is a more luxurious habit, a more 
vigorous health, a less precarious existence, induced by the care 
and attention of domesticators, that have caused the sterility ; 
that these animals are too well off, and not that they are ill off 
in any way ; and this theory explains the whole most conclusively. 
On the other hand, and in opposition to this vast and uniform 
collection of examples, Mr. Darwin adduces a few instances 
which tell the other way, but they are very few in number, and 
seem to me explicable on other grounds. Ferrets, it is notorious, 
arealways kept in astate of extreme depletion and as thin as 
possible. Domestic poultry are fed almost entirely on poor vegetable 
food, while their wild and semi-wild relatives feed much more on 
worms, insects, and on animal diet generally. In regard to sheep, 
it is notorious that very weak ewes generally bear twins, that 
Somersets and Dorsets are more fertile than Southdowns and 
Leicesters. We have, I may add, no facts to guide us in 
regard to wild dogs, and few in regard to wild cats ; but we do 
know that in tame ones the half-fed lantern-ribbed curs are more 
prolific than their sleek relations. In regard to domestic fowls, 
and especially pigeons, we must remember that their condition is 
materially altered by the disuse or only very partial and irregular 
use of their powers of flight, this must reduce their circulation 
and vigour very considerably, and make them Z70 ¢axto so much 
weaker. But these instances, upon which Mr. Darwin relies to 
answer Doubleday and others, are very partial indeed. In his 
own pages, as I have already said, they form a very small 
element compared with the overwhelming cases he quotes on the 
other side. So much so, indeed, that these cases may be taken 
as exceptions which prove the rule that domestication and im- 
proved conditions of life induce sterility in animals. 
It savours of scholastic philosophy to speak of Nature as 
exercising any influence on the regeneration of races, and yet 
there may be sound philosophy in the old notion that when 
an individual or a class is in danger of being extinguished 
from want, Nature puts forward a special effort to preserve 
it. The sickly mother, the half-starved plant, is more likely to 
breed than the healthy and the vigorous. If we remove the 
peasant’s family to the drawing room, it will cease to be com- 
posed of ten and twelve children, If we remove our daisies and 
| issue : 

cowslips to the greenhouse, their flowers grow double, and they 
ripen no seeds. The vine that has felt the frost is the one to 
pay the rent. Wherever we turn, in fact, we meet with exam- 
ples of the universal law ; and this law seems to be at issue 
with an important portion of Mr. Darwin’s theory, namely, 
that in the struggle for existence, the vigorous, the hearty, 
and the well-to-do, elbow the weak and decrepid until they 
elbow them out of existence, and supplant them. If I have 
said anything above which can be construed into an impertinence, 
I unconditionally withdraw it. The only excuse for soreness, 
is an impatience at what seems to the writer to be indefensible 
dogmatism. The days will not be ripe for scientific dogmatism 
until the Infallibility of Positive Philosophers has been gene- 
rally accepted, and it does not do to forestal that millennium, 
H. HoworrnH 
Mr. WALLACE has effectually set aside Mr. Howorth’s new 
views on Darwinism, and it now only remains to point out that 
the latter gentleman, in his instances, puts the cart before the 
horse. Hens that are fat and don’t lay are fat because they don’t 
lay. When the sexual powers, either in plants or animals, are 
defective from accident or design, the overgrowth always takes 
place, and this among animals is chiefly by the increase of 
adipose tissue. ; 
Birmingham Lawson Tait 
Recent Neologisms 
I HAVE been long accustomed to register the first appearance of 
new words and phrases. Of course the vast majority of these take 
no root, perishing where they fall. Here isa sample of the latest 
Survival, introduced, I think, by Darwin ; zndiscipline 
and zmfolcy, which were brought in by the Franco-Prussian War, 
and also the vulgarism /o ¢e/egram. The greatest atrocities in this 
line are committed by ‘‘ physicists,” if the shade of Faraday wil 
pardon me the use of that word ; and far away the worst coinage 
I ever encountered is due to Mr. Alfred R. Wallace. As it is 
“meet and right and our bounden duty” to stigmatise such in- 
truders, and if possible prevent their adoption, I take the liberty 
of making my feeble protest against Mr, Wallace's “‘ prolificness,” 
which he introduces to our norice in his letter on Mr. Howorth 
(NATURE, July 6, 1871, p. 181). In this case the hideousness of 
the coinage is some guarantee against its reception. 
Malvern Wells, July 8 C. M. INGLEBY 
Affinities of the Sponges 
I HAVE just read with much interest the paper in NATURE by 
Mr. W. Saville Kent, criticising my friend Carter's article in the 
“© Annals of Natural History” for this month, in which I fully 
concur. How Mr. Carter can have fallen into such an error, for 
such I must call it, I cannot imagine, as comparing a group of 
animals in Botryllus to those sponge cells, even in so highly a 
developed formas Grantia. For, taking this as the highest known 
form of sponge animal, it is at most only a monociliated sac, as 
shown both by Prof. Clark and by Mr. Carter. Now, it is well 
known to all investigators, and Mr. Carter has shown it himself, 
that the animals of Botryllus have distinct oral and faecal aper- 
tures, whereas the sponge cell, so far as has yet been seen, has 
only an oral aperture. Again, the Ascidian Botryllus is shown 
to be far higher in the scale when we come to compare its 
internal organisation, and not merely to confine ourselves to 
the sac-like tunic. The discharge of the fecal matter into a 
common cloacal canal is to me not a sufficient reason for com- 
paring these groups of animals to the sponge animals in Grantia, 
But what I wish to draw attention to more particularly is this, 
that in the hurry and bustle of our investigators of the present 
day, all old associations are mostly, if not entirely, forgotten. I 
can scarcely think that they are ignored, but are forgotten. 
Thus, Prof. Grant was, I believe, the first to determine the 
character and the full importance of the seed-like body in 
Hal:chondria by placing watch-ylasses in the vessel in 
which living specimens of the above sponge was placed ; the 
bodies were thus discharged from the faecal canal of the parent 
sponge, and attached themselves to the watch-glasses, and he then 
carefully watched their development. Mr. Carter, being a pupil of 
Dr. Grant, no doubt followed his teacher’s plan of investigation, 
which has led to the brilliant results of this gentleman’s in- 
