﻿174 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



proportional number of specific characters " do not 

 admit of being proved useful, or correlated with other 

 characters that are useful. Now, observe, we have 

 here a simple question of fact. We are not at present 

 concerned with the question how far the argument 

 from ignorance may be held to apply in mitigation 

 of such cases ; but we are concerned only with the 

 question of fact, as to what proportional number of 

 cases actually occur where we are unable to suggest 

 the use of specific characters, or the useful characters 

 with which these apparently useless ones are corre- 

 lated. I maintain, as a matter of fact, that the cases 

 in question embrace <; a large proportional number 

 of specific characters." On the other hand, I am 

 accused of betraying ignorance of species, and of the 

 work of li species-makers," in advancing this state- 

 ment ; and have been told by Mr. Wallace, and 

 others of his school, that there is absolutely no 

 evidence to be derived from nature in support of my 

 views. Well, in the first place, if this be the case, 

 it is somewhat remarkable that a large body of 

 competent naturalists, such as Bronn, Broca, Nageli, 

 Kerner, Sachs, De Vries, Focke, Henslow, Haeckel, 

 Kolliker, Eimer. Giard, Pascoe, Mivart. Seebohm, 

 Lloyd Morgan, Dixon, Beddard, Geddes Gulick. and 

 also, as we shall presently see, Darwin himself, should 

 have fallen into the same error. And it is further 

 remarkable that the more a man devotes himself to 

 systematic work in any particular department — 

 whether as an ornithologist, a conchologist. an ento- 

 mologist, and so forth — the less is he disposed to 

 accept the dogma of specific characters as universally 

 adaptive characters. But, in the second place, and 



