THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 85 



comparisons, it is from a kind of respect for the character of 

 certain learned men who have thus treated anthropological 

 science. We believe very little in biology, or in demonstra- 

 tions by similarities. Every animal, every organ, every ana- i 

 tomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, 1 

 development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commence- 

 ment of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular 

 theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy; but every 

 day the laws of life (we might say, the laws of nature) are 

 multiplied and complicated ; every morning the searcher after 

 truth must expect to discover some phenomenon which will 

 disturb the scientific belief of the night before. " Every even- 

 ing," said one of the masters of science, " our best prayer is 

 to form afresh a synthesis of the sciences."* Well, if modern 

 anatomy has taught us that the initial phase of the develop- 

 ment of the egg differs according to the animal, f even as 

 nothing resembles less the development of certain bones of the 

 face than that of their neighbours, how shall we dare to com- 

 pare any animal with man ? J Having said this, let us return 

 to the influence of climate upon wild or free animals. 



Isidore Geoffroy quotes, with complacency, the instance of 

 the Corsican and African stag taken from Europe to these two 

 countries scarcely twenty centuries ago, which form at the 

 present day two clearly distinct varieties. From that the au- 

 thor of the Histoire Naturelle Generale argues rapid and sen- 

 sible modifications, caused by the action of the medium. But, 



* [Why will some scientific men persist in separating, so strongly, religion 

 and science, as if both could not be practised ? This is what the " master of 

 science" appears to think. Each student of science may well apply the 

 following lines : " It is your duty to go on steadfastly, unwaveringly, ohne 

 Hast, ohne East, conscious that you interpret, to the best of your finite ability, 

 your conceptions of the truths of science, equally conscious that whatever 

 may be the immediate result of your labours, they must eventually fulfil the 

 aspiration which tends ad majorem Dei gloriam." C. Carter Blake On the 

 Doctrine of Final Causes (Hastings Philosophical Society, meeting of January 

 13, 1864). EDITOR.] 



f Eobin, Memoire sur la Production du Blastoderme (Journal de Physiologic, 

 p. 358, 1862). 



It is thus that we do not see realised in man that general law which 

 decrees that animal species are large in proportion to the continent which 

 they inhabit; the mean size of the mammalia, in particular, is regularly 

 proportional to the extent of Australia, America, the ancient continent, and 

 the bottom of the ocean. 



