254 THE CROSSING, &C, OF PIGEONS AND FOWLS. 



known difficulty in his way ; and which, he saw, 

 could be dodged, only by recording all of the com- 

 plicated and seemingly inconsistent and inexplicable 

 phenomena of the crossing and close-interbreeding of 

 individuals of the same species, and, then, candidly (?) 

 putting it to his readers, Whether any reliance could 

 be placed upon the obvious inference from the sterili- 

 ty of hybrids, when the whole subject of sterility and 

 fertility, both within the same species, and with differ- 

 ent species, was in such an inextricable maze ! 

 ' This accounts for his suicidal course, in adducing so 

 plentifully, and so strongly, phenomena which show, 

 that evil attends, degree for degree, departure from 

 the one, normal type of any species. This expedient 

 is (to borrow an expression, once used by George 

 Henry Lewes, in another connection), "facile, but 

 futile." For, the maze, in which the phenomena men- 

 tioned are involved, is not inextricable; the idea of 

 reversion, and of proportionate development, being 

 the thread, which resolves all of the confusion into 

 the most beautiful harmony. 



But, his device is equally futile, even upon the 

 supposition, that the facts adduced, are not explicable. 

 Explicable or not, both classes of phenomena con- 

 found all of his speculations. For, as the obvious in- 

 ference, from the sterility of hybrids (even when such 

 phenomenon is unexplained), is the negation of Dar- 

 win's theory ; so, the obvious inference, from the ster- 

 ility which attends divergence of character, is (even 

 when such phenomenon is unresolved), in diametrical 

 opposition to such theory. To take, then, these two 



