282 
to the oak that we do to the potato, how would it affect its vitality. The 
oak, if grown under favorable circumstances, lives a thousand years as 
naturally as the potato does one season. If we were to multiply, then, 
the duration of a single oak by the number of successive periods of 
growth through which the potato has been extended, we should have an 
individual oak of over two hundred thousand years growth—a most 
'unwedgeable and gnarled oak/ certainly ! 
But the advocates of this degenerate theory refer us to certain varie¬ 
ties of carnation propagated by cuttings and layers, 'which, they say, 
have so deteriorated by extension or artificial division, that florists have 
\ 
been obliged to abandon them for other and more recent varieties. But 
if this proves any thing, we apprehend it to be an argument against 
their theory. For the carnation in its natural state experiences no such 
deterioration. It sprang originally from its specific centre and propagated 
itself, we know not how many centuries, without deterioration, until it 
fell into the hands of the florists and was forced by them into unnatural 
conditions. If the hybrid carnations and ‘streaked gyllyflowers’ (‘nature’s 
bastards/ as Sliakspeare calls them,) of the florists, have not the same 
loving tendency to propagate themselves as flowers which have not been 
forced into unnatural copulation ; if their fertilizing particles have not 
the same specific power, over their species, it is no argument against the 
continuation of the carnation which has not been thus artificially, and 
we might say, unnaturally impregnated. If it be a law of nature that 
monsters shall not propagate their species, is it any argument against 
propagation ? If there is exhibited in all natural phenomena a repug¬ 
nance to hibridity ; first to prevent its taking place, and then, to limit 
the generative power so as to admit only of a return to the original spe¬ 
cific form ; instead of being an argument against, it is certainly a most 
powerful argument in favor of the fixity of species. The fact is, nature 
is all-producing, all-cherishing, all-nourishing. 
“ Suis hie omnia plena muneribus 
and if she manifests an insurmountable repugnance to hibridity, to infer¬ 
tility and degenerate intermediate races, it is only that she may maintain 
without contamination the integrity of her productive energizing power. 
If the salacious mare must be blindfolded before she will be lined by an 
ass, it is no proof that she will fly at the approach d ’ stalon . We have 
