50 



the individuals of any species, so deprived of some of 

 its characters, are placed under domestication, or under- 

 other propitious surroundings, these characters not only 

 may, but do reappear, and resume in a greater or lesser 

 degree, the perfectly developed condition in which they 

 were, originally. He actually shows, whilst affecting 

 profound ignorance of the cause of variation, that the 

 features and organs which were lost by each species 

 under nature, are more than sufficient, in both number 

 and kind, to account for all of the improvements which 

 appear in such species under domestication, or which 

 may appear under nature. 



Any doubts, which may arise, in the reader's mind, 

 as to whether Darwin has been truly represented in this 

 connection, will assuredly be dissipated by the follow- 

 ing copious and telling extracts, from Darwin's "Origin 

 of Species," and from his "Animals and Plants Under 

 Domestication." 



With respect to past degeneration, or the loss of char- 

 acters, and to present Reversion, or the regain of such 

 lost characters, Darwin says (p. 1 26, Origin of Species) : 



" Characters reappear after having been lost for many 

 generations." 



" Organs in a rudimentary condition, plainly show 

 that an early progenitor had the organ, in a fully devel- 

 oped state; and this, in some instances, implies an 

 enormous amount of modification in the descendants " 

 (p. 572, Origin of Species). 



"With species, under a state of nature, rudimentary 

 organs are so extremely common, that scarcely one 

 species can be mentioned which is wholly free from a 



