70 EVOLUTION. OLD AND NEW. 



to be remembered. As for De Maillet, who makes birds 

 spring from flying fishes, reptiles from creeping fishes, 

 and men from tritons, his dreams, taken in part from 

 Anaximander, should have their place not in the history 

 of science, but in that of the aberrations of the human 

 mind."* 



A far more forcible and pregnant passage, however, 

 is the following, from Sir Walter Ealeigh's 'History 

 of the World,' which Mr. Garnett has been good enough 

 to point out to me : — 



" For mine owne opinion I find no diflPerence but only 

 in magnitude between the Cat of Europe, and the 

 Ounce of India ; and even those dogges which are become 

 wild in Hispagniola, with which the Spaniards used to 

 devour the naked Indians, are now changed to Wolves, 

 and begin to destroy the breed of their Cattail, and doe 

 often times teare asunder their owne children. The 

 common crow and rooke of India is full of red feathers 

 in the droun'd and low islands of Caribana, and the 

 blackbird and thrush hath his feathers mixt with black 

 and carnation in the north parts of Virginia. The 

 Dog-fish of England is the Sharke of the South Ocean. 

 For if colour or magnitude made a difference of Species, 

 then were the Negroes, which wee call the Blacke-Mores, 

 nan cmimalia rationalia, not Men but some kind of 

 strange Beasts, and so the giants of the South America 

 should be of another kind than the people of this part 

 of the World. We also see it dayly that the nature of 

 fruits are changed by transplantation." t 



* 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 38.5, 1859, 



t ' History of the World," bk. i. oh. vii. § 9 ('Athenseum,' Mnrch 27, 

 1875). 



