DOMESTICATED ORGANISMS. 139 
all probability was a real species! What a pity Wagner 
has not giyen us any information about this important 
and difficult problem ! 
Now, however ridiculous this view may appear to us, it. 
is only the logical sequence of a false view (which is widely 
spread) of the special nature of cultivated organisms, and 
one may oecasionally hear similar objections from naturalists 
of great reputation. I must most decidedly, and at once, 
condemn this utterly false conception. It is the same per- 
verseness which is committed by physicians who maintain 
that diseases are artificial productions, and not natural 
phenomena. It has been a work of hard labour to combat 
this prejudice, and it is only in recent times that men have 
generally adopted the view that diseases are nothing 
but natural changes of the organisms, or really natural 
phenomena of life, which are produced by changed and 
abnormal conditions of existence. Disease, therefore, is not. 
a life beyond Nature’s realm (vita preter naturam), as the 
early physicians used to say, but a natural life under con- 
ditions which produce illness and threaten the body with 
danger. Just in the same manner, cultivated organic forms. 
are not artificial works of man, but natural productions. 
which have arisen under the influence of peculiar conditions 
of life. Man by his culture can never directly produce a 
new organic form, but he can breed organisms under new 
conditions of life, which are such as to influence and trans- 
form them. All domestic animals and all garden plants 
are originally descended from wild species, which have been 
transformed by the peculiar conditions of culture. 
A thorough comparison of cultivated forms (races and 
varieties) with organisms not altered by cultivation (species 
