REMARKS ON MR DARWIN'S THEORY. 



133 



by trying to show that there are reasons for believing that a hmit 

 does exist somewhere. The following are the most important ones 

 that have been brought forward to this effect. 



1. All varieties made by man, if left to themselves, show a tendency 



to revert to the original forms ; while natural species do not. 



2. All varieties made by man interbreed freely, while natural species 



do not. 



3. Species remain constant for immense periods of time, as is 



proved by the exact resemblance of the mummies of Egypt, 

 and many fossils, to living forms. 



4. Some genera, as Lingula, &c, have existed with very little varia- 



tion from the most ancient times to the present. 



5. Instead of progressing, some animals seem to have degenerated ; 



as the recent armadillo from the giyptodon, &c. 



6. We have no right to argue on domestic breeds, since they have 



been chosen on account of their plasticity. 



I will now give answers that have been made to these objections. 



1. It cannot be proved that many of our domestic animals revert 



to their original forms when left to themselves ; for it has 

 always been found impossible to say what their original forms 

 were : but if this was the case, a simple experiment would 

 decide. Recent varieties certainly do show this tendency, 

 because of the extremely short time during- which selection has 

 been going on ; and the rapidity, owing to artificial causes, in 

 which the change took place. In a wild state the changes 

 progress very slowly by natural causes, and therefore by the 

 time a variety has changed sufficiently to be called a new 

 species, it has given up all thought (if I may so express myself) 

 of reverting to its original form. 



2. " Man can hardly, or only with great difficulty, select any devia- 



tion of structure, except such as are externally visible, and he 

 rarely cares for what is internal." Besides, the varieties 

 formed by man have only been in existence for a few thousand 

 years, while natural species have been so for hundreds of 

 thousands ; for until they have been formed long enough to 

 deviate markedly from other species they are only called 

 varieties. 



3. The answer to this argument is that they have not yet had time 



to change, owing to their conditions of life not having been 

 much altered. The mummies of Egypt are perhaps four 

 thousand years old, but Mr. L. Horner, the President of the 

 Geological Society, has shown that man, sufficiently civilized 

 to manufacture pottery, existed in the valley of the Nile thirteen 

 or fourteen thousand years ago. And the same with the fossils; 

 as we go further back in time we see living forms get rarer 

 and rarer until at last they die out altogether. If a form 

 has managed to exist for a long time without change, it is 



