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



mony, there, incontestably, is not. All of the instances 

 of adaptation, shown by Darwin, are, when they involve 

 a decrease of structure, instances which imply an ad- 

 vance towards sterility, and consequent extinction. 

 Where the adaptations cited, show increase of struc- 

 ture, the adaptations are possible, only because they 

 are the regain of structural integrity, previously lost. 

 It has been urged, that it is gratuitous, to allege that an 

 animal is in any way inferior, after having lost a char- 

 acter, through adaptation to changed conditions of 

 life. The answer to this is: We do not call im- 

 perfection what we merely fancy such, but prove it to 

 be imperfection, by the facts of close-interbreeding, 

 which demonstrate, that physiological evils, viz., less- 

 ened fertility, and lessened constitutional vigor, are 

 wrought upon the organism, in proportion, degree for 

 degree, with such alleged imperfection. 



With varieties, under domestication, this process of 

 extinction, by means of the evils resulting from the 

 interbreeding of forms wanting in characters of their 

 species, is, with Pigeons, Fowls, and Pigs, hastened 

 by Man, through his effecting the reduction of so, 

 many characters, in each variety, and through his 

 altering the ratio of the development of the characters 

 which remain. Such varieties cannot long survive, if 

 they retain always their peculiarity of form. Darwin 

 speaks of high fancy varieties of the Pigeon, being 

 known, for hundreds of years ; and, obviously desires 

 it to be inferred, that such varieties may so long breed 

 their kind. This they cannot do. Of these varieties, 

 he himself says ; that they " seem both to have origi- 



