1861.] ON TYPICAL SELECTION. 5 



lengthen out a pig's snout, and thicken his legs and body into a truuk 

 and frame similar in size to the elephant ? Mr. Darwin must contend 

 that this would be possible, if man continued to act uninterruptedly, 

 for a sufficient length of time in the same direction. Perhaps future 

 experiments may enable us to speak with certainty upon this point. 

 At present I conceive the general feeling of the most experienced 

 breeders would be against him. It may be true that they " habitu- 

 ally speak of an animal's organization as something quite plastic, 

 which they can mould almost as they please " by the principle of 

 selection (Darwin, p. 31). Yet Mr. Darwin also tells us that "all the 

 breeders of the various domestic animals, and cultivators of plants, 

 with whom he has ever conversed, or whose treatises he has read, are 

 firmly convinced that the several breeds to which they have attended 

 are descended from so manj'^ aboriginally distinct species " {id. p. 28). 

 Now they are no doubt mistaken in this notion ; and it is easy to see 

 whence the mistake has arisen, — namely, from each one having 

 attended only to one out of many possible kinds of variation, pro- 

 ducible in the particular animal or plant forming the object of his care. 

 But it is difficult to conceive whence the general notion could be 

 derived, if each breeder found no limit, no stop, to the amount of 

 variation which he can produce in the particular direction selected by 

 him for experiment. 



But this difficulty disappears, like that first stated, if the process 

 of selection be transferred from the external action of circumstance, to 

 the internal action of the living Power gradually modifying the con- 

 stitution of the individual. It is a supposition agreeable to common 

 experience, that to each particular constitution, certain limits of 

 change are assigned, within which the possible varieties of the creature 

 possessing it fluctuate. But if the constitution changes, these limits 

 must be presumed to change also. Each fresh species, then, may be 

 regarded as a resting-place in the advance of life, — the development 

 of the possible varieties inherent in it being left to the external action 

 of circumstances ; while among these the Power manifested in life 

 selects the forms most suitable to be converted into other species, and 

 thus carries on the differentiation of living beings a step further in its 

 proposed course. 



Other grave difficulties disappear if we accept the idea of" typical," 

 in place of "natural" selection. One very serious one, in my judg- 

 ment, is the difficulty of seeing how natural varieties could perpetuate 

 themselves at all, if they retained that mutual prolificuess character- 

 istic of all the varieties upon which we can experimentalize. 



Able and ingenious as is Mr. Darwin's argument to show that 

 selection, by the " struggle for existence" is possible, he seems to me, 

 throughout the whole of it, to confuse two distinct conception?, 

 namely, the effect of peculiarities of structure in giving one plant or 

 animal an advantage over another, and the preservation of those 

 peculiiirities. His reasoning would be conclusive if applied to a 

 state of things where each different variety was distinguished by an 

 exclusive disposition to produce its own kind, as we actually find 

 to be the case with species ; but he applies it to a state of things 



