5488 Zoology : its present Phasis 



widely-spread and scantily-supplied springs all species of animals, 

 gave rise to those ill-assorted unions terminating in the production of 

 new species. The arida mitrix leonum has, from time immemorial, 

 been celebrated for the production of what was new ;* so said Horace, 

 and the adage is still true, though not in the sense of the illustrious 

 author of the ' Historia Animalium.' 



The question of the fixity of species first assumed a scientific form 

 in Cuvier's hands ; he based his view on the skeleton, but, as a 

 scientific man, he was candid enough to admit that between the 

 presumed fossil and the living organic world the differences, in many 

 instances, scarcely amounted to specific. This occurs in the horse, 

 dog, ox, elephant, &c; notwithstanding, he viewed them as specific 

 and distinct on other grounds, and in this we feel disposed to agree 

 with him : not so De Blainville ; with him the Elephas primogenius, 

 the mammoth of Cuvier, is of the same species as the living Asiatic ; 

 the same view he applied to many carnivora, pachydermata, &c. But 

 now one of two things ; the primitive elephant, the mammoth, and the 

 so-called fossil horse, ox, bear, dog, &c, either were identical with 

 those now alive, or they were not. The question of identity, we hold, 

 cannot be decided by any examination of the skeleton alone, for who, 

 looking at the skeletons of the horse and ass, the zebra and quagga, 

 and Tsazita'i, and observing their strong resemblance, not to say 

 identity, could ever have imagined them to belong to species, perhaps 

 even genera, so distinct from each other as they in reality are, had he 

 not been forewarned of the fact by a knowledge of the entire and 

 living animal ? So it is with the mammoth, bears, &c; but let us 

 suppose them to have been of the same species, then it must of 

 necessity be admitted that the dawn of the present order of things, as 

 Humboldt has remarked, must have penetrated much deeper into 

 antiquity than is generally supposed, or, to express it in simple and 

 not mythical language, the appearance on the earth of the existing 

 species of animals counts from an antiquity which upsets not merely 

 Bishop Usher's chronology, but every other hitherto offered, — even 

 the modern and most orthodox palaeontological. And here the posi- 

 tion of the horse, dog, &c, merits a passing remark : if the presumed 

 fossil are identical with the living, what becomes of the fine-spun 

 theories of naturalists ascribing to man's influence, by domesticity, the 

 origin of the domestic horse, ox, dog, sheep, &c. Goethe affirmed 

 that the domestic ox was the direct result of civilization and domes- 

 ticity acting through a million of years. Man, then, lived a million of 

 years ago. Goethe's theory can scarcely be the true one, in any 

 sense. What has domesticity done for the ass and the elephant, — 

 the camel, and, we may add, the lama ? From the remotest times 

 these animals have been subjected to the influence of man, and yet 

 over them that influence has been pointless. This difficulty Cuvier 

 not only instinctively foresaw, but was forced to listen to towards 

 the close of his great career. The resemblance, not to say identity, of 



* " Aliciiiid semper novi Africa offert."-*- Mar. 



