338 
ON CROSSES AND 
probable, that if the Almighty created the original types ca- 
pable of permanent variations under different circumstances, 
perhaps of soil or climate, those variations were worked at a 
very early period, on the first diffusion of seeds into every 
different portion of the world, especially by the operation of 
the flood, and may have in part resulted from the changes of 
climate which accompanied it and shortened the life of man. 
We must recollect, that although the different races of dogs, 
which all freely interbreed, are universally admitted to have 
come from one type, though now outwardly more unlike to 
each other than numberless distinct species of other animals, 
we know not what the similitude of that type was ; we have 
no record concerning the original wild dog, nor whether there 
existed immediately before or after the deluge any dogs in an 
undomesticated state ; nor have we any knowledge of the 
time or place when any one of the several races, as grey- 
hound, terrier, spaniel, bull-dog, &c. took its birth; nor is 
there a single known instance of two parent dogs of the same 
race, giving birth to individuals of a new race, or materially 
dissimilar to themselves, except where they are mongrels, and 
one of the ancestral types reappears more strongly than the 
other. Neither have we any information concerning the ori- 
gin of the different races of mankind, which are as different 
in appearance as the species of vegetables ; we have not seen 
any new race arise within the period of historical certainty ; 
and whatever we do know concerning them, refers the time 
of their branching out from the common stock to very re- 
mote antiquity, at a period antecedent to or coeval with the 
dispersion of mankind over the globe. If it had been other- 
wise, the various races would have been blended, instead of 
occupying different localities. It is probable that the various 
races of dogs owe their origin to a very early period ; to the 
days, when the effects arising from change of situation, were 
first experienced by the several created members of the ani- 
mal and vegetable kingdom : and it is no more essential to 
believe that individuals of every one of the present species of 
fox, or antelope, or finch (many of which are more like to 
each other than the greyhound is to the terrier, though they 
do not intermingle), entered with their present respective as- 
tiana, Mentha, Quercus, Salix, and Narcissus, are however a long list of Genera 
enumerated hy Schiede, 1825, and Lasch Linn. 1S29, as having pioduced spon- 
taneous hybrids, to which Crinum may be added. 
