x7. 50.] TO CHARLES L. BRACE. 459 
1. “ Merest fancies,” “ baseless fabric of a dream,” 
etc. 
Why, what made Owen an evolutionist as early as 
Darwin? And what has made so many naturalists, 
Mivart, and lately Dana, for instance, deve, 
who yet think nothing of Natural Selectio 
But to illustrate. You allow that the ees. 
ary pedigree of the horse is made out. But what 
had “ Natural Selection ” to do with the making this 
out ? 
Tt would have been all the very same, both the evi- 
dence and the ground of the inference, if Natural 
Selection had never been propounded. There is no 
evidence how the forms were selected, there is simply 
the fact of the series of forms, which, with other like 
evidence, brings conviction to most naturalists that 
one has somehow come from the other. And this con- 
viction is about as strong to those who do not believe 
a — Selection” will explain it, as those who 
me Professor Guyot, you mean. Dana avowedly 
adopts from Guyot. 
. To those who talk or think of necessary evolu- 
tion, or, like Spencer, deduce it ex necessitate rei, 
this matter of immense time is very pertinent. I 
don’t think Darwin is bothered by it much. On my 
way of thinking, it is no bother at all, considering 
what a deal of time there has been anyway. 
4. Do you mean “hybrid forms”? I fail to see 
what hybrids, that is, mules from the crossing of re- 
lated species, has to do with it, one way or the other. 
Nobody (of clear conceptions) supposes new species 
come from the mixture of other species. That is a 
way to confuse or blend species, not to originate them. 
