THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 43 
tion of his conclusions. The times were riper than he 
had realized. He has outlived nearly all his scientific 
opponents, the greatest and perhaps the last of whom 
was Agassiz. To-day there is not one whose scien- 
tific studies have been such as to give him a right 
to speak, whose views are not in substantial accord 
with those of the Origin of Species. Darwin’s work 
has destroyed forever the closet-formed idea of a “spe- 
cies” in biology as something fundamentally different 
from a variety or a race. 
Let me take an illustration. Camille 
Dareste, writing of the hundred or 
more alleged species of the true eel 
(Anguilla), says: 
“There are at least four distinct types, resulting 
from the combination of a certain number of characters; 
but the study of a very large number of specimens be- 
longing to these four specific types has convinced me 
that each of these characters may vary independently, 
and that, consequently, certain individuals exhibit a com- 
bination of characters belonging to two distinct types. 
It is therefore possible to establish clearly defined bar- 
Tiers separating these two types. The genus Anguilla 
exhibits, then, a phenomenon which is found in many 
other genera, and even in the genus Homo itself, and 
which can be explained in only two ways: Either these 
four forms have had a common origin and are races 
merely, and not species; or else they are distinct in 
origin and are true species, but have been more or less 
commingled, and have produced by their mingling inter- 
mediate forms, which co-exist with those which are 
primitive. Science is not in the position to decide be- 
tween these two alternatives.” 
It is on idle problems like this as to the reality of 
species that the strength of the naturalists of the past 
The species of 
eel. 
