THE ARGUMENT FROM PALAEONTOLOGY 63 



Wallace says: "The fantail and pouter pigeons 

 are two very distinct and unlike breeds, which we 

 yet know to have been both derived from the 

 common wild rock-pigeon. Now, if we had every 

 variety of living pigeon before us, or even all 

 those which have lived during the present century, 

 we should find no intermediate types between these 

 two — none combining in any degree the characters 

 of the pouter and fantail. Neither should" we ever 

 hnd such an intermediate form, even had there been 

 preserved a specimen of every breed of pigeon 

 since the ancestral rock-pigeon was first tamed by 

 man." 



This point may be illustrated by an example 

 taken from another department of knowledge — the 

 science of language. Take a word such as regnum, 

 and see how the word has become modified in the 

 different languages of European nations, when 

 exposed to different conditions of environment. The 

 following table shows various modifications derived 

 directly or indirectly from the original word regnum. 



The word regnum corresponds to the blue rock- 

 pigeon in that it is the parent of all the other forms 

 of words, and represents a fossil form or extinct 

 word, belonging to a dead language. 



