andjuture Prospects. 5491 



what is the nature of that relation ? Is there consanguinity ? This 

 is really the important question, in a philosophic sense, and in its 

 solution is involved that other, namely, the unity of the organic 

 world. 



Is species always young, or is it genus ? It must be the latter, if 

 the young be born and partly grow up with generic characters ; else 

 whence these characters? If the dentition of the young of every 

 species of the Salmonidae, for example, be identical or nearly so,* that 

 is, if the character of the young be generic, in the widest sense of the 

 term, what right has generation to the title of specific ? Simply 

 because experience tells us that, whatever be the form of the young, 

 the form it must in time assume will ultimately be that of the parent. 

 This specific influence, always present, does not show its powers sud- 

 denly or at once; it strengthens with the growth of the young, and 

 may be, to a certain extent, checked but not destroyed. On this sub- 

 ject we have few observations to be trusted, and still fewer experi- 

 ments. Travellers still talk coolly enough about the Portuguese, who, 

 living within the tropics, have blackened to a negrine dye; no 

 reasoning person believes in such nonsense now ; nevertheless, the 

 story is still repeated. What the European races — the Scandinavian, 

 for example — might become, if located in a tropical country and forced 

 to trust to their own resources, without any draught upon fresh imports 

 from Europe, it were difficult to foretel, — nothing can with safety be 

 predicted in the sciences of pure observation. Such a race would 

 probably become extinct in no long time, together with all the Euro- 

 pean animals imported into the country. But, in fact, we have no 

 data to enable scientific men to arrive at just conclusions on such 

 points as these. The influence which external circumstances are 

 adequate to exercise on the living organic world must at all times be 

 small, imperceptible, as diffused through countless ages, — lost in the 

 gulf, — the abyss of time. Besides evidences of the most terrible 

 cataclysms, producing no doubt geological epochs, are evident every- 

 where, and the influence of these cannot be calculated. The conver- 

 sion of the generic product of all animals into the specific is thus a 

 mystery, but it seems to be one which includes, could it be explained, 

 the extinction of certain species and the appearance of others; in 

 other words, it explains the fossil and the present organic world, and 

 their relation to each other. 



It may now be admitted that neither man nor accident can form or 

 give rise to any new species, to replace those which — thanks to the 

 illustrious Cuvier — we know to have become extinct. How is it with 

 the productions which naturalists have hitherto called varieties, which 

 some are disposed to call races, by which no doubt they can only 

 mean breeds, the consideration of which they seem inclined to elevate 

 to the dignily of a scientific question. What is a breed and what a 

 race? Unquestionably a race means a species, implied almost by the 

 popular meaning of the term. When we say Anglo-Saxon race, we 



* Knox, in the 'Zoologist' and ' Lancet' for 1856. 



