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I ( -?-??'? ', ? -
' MR DARWIN'S NEW WORK
. 1 I
32 (From the Athmicwn.) ,_ I
In his work on the "Origin of Species by
means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation
of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,"
Mr. Charles Darwin " promised to publish soon
the facts on which the conclusions given in it
were founded ;'' and after long delay " this first
work'! is published. The excuse for delay is, we
are sorry to say, ill health and we may add,
in'furthor'explanation, the preparation of two
books : one on the fertilization of plants by the
agency of insects, and another on vegetable
climbers and creepers. But even now we are
told to wait for the facts upon which Mr. Darwin
founded his conclusions. This is only " the first
work ;" and if the other instalments must be
waited for as many years as the species discussed
may require, the generation of men who
read the earliest statement of the hypothesis will
all have passed away before Mr. Darwin's task
shall be done. The title of the two books on
species are significant for there is a notable
difference between " the Origin of Species" and
" the variations" of the domestic plants and
animals. Henceforth, the rhetoricians will have
a better illustration of anti-climax than the
mountain which brought forth a mouse, or the
god of war who was lieutenant-colonel to the
Earl of March is the discoverer of the origin of
species who tried to explain the variations of
pigeons I For this is the literal and exact truth.
Bulky and closely printed as these post-octavo
volumes are, they contain nothing more in support
of the hypothesis of origin by selection than
a more detailed ro-assorvation of the guesses
founded upon the so-called variations of pigeons.
This is, in fact; the substance of Mr. Charles
Darwin's own description of the scope of his pro- I
sent work:-" The object of this work is not to describe
all the many races of animals which have
been domesticated by man and of the plants which
havobconcultivatedbyhim; even if possessed the
requisite knowledge, so gigantic an undertaking
would be here superfluous. It is my intention
to give under the head of each species only such
facts as I have been able to collect or observe,
showing the amount and nature of the changes
which animals and plants have undergone whilst
under man's dominion, or which bear on the general
principles of variation. In one case alone,
namely, in that of the domestic pigeon, I will
describe fully all the chief races, their history,
the amount and nature of their differences, and
the probable steps by which they have been
formed. ? I have selected this case, because, as we
shall hereafter see, the materials are better than
in any other and one case fully described will, in
fact, illustrate all others. But I shall also describe
domesticated rabbits, fowls and ducks, with considerable
full Ross.'' M. Flourens and M. Fouche
have, done Mr. Darwin the honor of refuting
him. They have paid an amount of attention to
his opinions which no British physiologist of
similar standing has deemed it worth his while to
bestow upon them. After Bell, the investigator
who has thrown most light on the nervous system
is Flourens, and a fair statement of the facts
and arguments of such an opponent was expected
from Mr. Darwin. But we have searched
this work in vain for any such fair fighting.
The readers of Mr. Darwin will learn from his
pages that M. Flourens has made experiments
in crossing dogs, wolves, jackals, horses, asses,
monkeys, and published books on instinct and
longevity 5 but not that he has sent, forth a
volume proving once more the old doctrine of
tho immutability of species, in opposition to the
imaginations of Mr. Darwin. What we have
just called imaginations their author, no doubt,
calls his " conclusions," while explaining them
to be but commencements ; showing thereby
that the contradictory stores called " bulls" are
not exclusively of Irish manufacture. Whilst
ignoring the work of M. Flourens, Mr. Darwin
acknowledges the existence of M. Pouchet's
" Plurality of Races," in far less formidable
performance, which has been translated into
English. But he says he cannot perceive the force
of M. Pouchet's " arguments, or to speak more
oorróctry,assortions." Now,we'aresadly mistaken
if there are not clear proofs in the pages of the
book before us that, on the contrary, Mr. Darwin
has,pórcoivod, felt, and yielded to the force of
the arguments or assertions of his French antagonists
M. Poulet insisted that variation
under domestication throws no light on the
natural modification of species and Mr. Darwin,
surrendering entirely to the force of this remark,
postpones to future works the consideration of
the natural modification of, species. " In a
second work," he says, " I shall discuss the vari-
ability of organic beings in a state of nature,
namely, the individual differences presented by
animals and plants, and those slightly greater
and generally inherited differences, which are
ranked by naturalists as varieties or geographical
races." "In a third work I shall try the
principle of natural selection' by seeing how
far it will give a fair , explanation of
the, geological succession of organic beings,
.their,,djstrib"utio'ii, in, past and present times,
and their mutual affinities" and homologies."
"The:, principle , of natural selection may be
looked at as a. mere hypothesis says Mr. Darwin
himself, " until it explains these and other large
bodies of facts ;" that is to say, for at least a very
long time to come. Mr. Darwin's third work, it
is obvious, must not be published until after the
students of the remains of ancient life shall have
discovered " the geological succession of organic
being" a thing which the past generation of
them thought they knew, and the present genera-
tion are sure is not known. If Mr. Darwin's
suppositions is to be deemed a mere hypothesis
until it shall satisfactorily explain what is not
known, the discussion of it is adjourned by its
author sine die. Long before the conditions of
proof stated by Mr. Darwin shall have been
complied with, the author of it and the opponents
of it will have passed away, and their controversies
with them.'" "If," says Mr. Darwin, organic
beings had not possessed, inherent tendency
to vary, man' could have done nothing." The
reply is that man has done nothing, and that
there is an inherent tendency not to vary. Not
merely has made never originated a species, he
has never permanently varied a species not
having been able to produce varieties even, but
only breeds-and having, whilst producing them,
found that species are without variableness or
the shadow of turning. The immutability of
species is maintained by two unconquerable laws
-the ultimate sterility of broods, and their reversion
to the type when let alone. Man can
influence size, which is a variation of individuals
and not of species. Man can modify the flowers
and fruits of plants within certain inexorable
limits, (and obtain size or flavour or varying
blooms ; but specific characters elude his power
entirely; Pormanout reproduction is the fundamental
idea of species and there is no continuous
fecundity in breeds, their sterility or
reversion being inevitable. What man seems
to be most able to reproduce and transmit
through several generations are diseases. Buffon,
George and Frederic Cuvier, and Flourens have
been able to cross the dog and the wolf, and to
obtain three generations of theo wolf-dogs, or
dog wolves, and no more. The conclusions of M.
I Flourens are, in fact, founded in experiments
which have been continued for about a hundred
years. As in his book on the Origin of Species,
so in the work on Domestic Animals, Mr. Darwin
dwells chiefly on the breeds of pigeons. Bus
animated world rests chiefly upon the back of a
pigeon and even the pigeon, as will appear by and
by, upsets him. Meanwhile, it maybe well
to show from what insignificant promises Mr.
Darwin can obtain the largest inferences. The
period of gestation is an unalterable character of
species ; but Mr. Darwin fancies this result of
the scientific observations of ages is impugned
by a statement, by somebody, that there is a difference
of four, five, or six days between the ages
station of merino and Southdown sheep, The doc-
trial of physiological science is, that the period of
healthy gestation is fixed ; the shortening or pro-
longing)! the period being one tediseaso,all unduly
bortiollspringbuinguiihealthy. Of course if broods,
of au i mails and crossings of plants are not permanent
the results of brooding and crossing only
prove the immutability of species Newall broods
are shams. The tendency of peculiarities to per-'
potato themselves is so much weaker than the
immutability which causes sterility or reversion,
that breeds are not maintained by breeding
merely, but by breeding and weeding. "There is
a black sheep in every Hook," says the proverb,
which the cattle breeders have given to the world
after themselves deriving it from their experience
of the recurrence to wild colours in the
most carefully tended of snowy flocks. When
seedlings return to their wild types, the garden
ors call them "rogues," and condemn them to
the ash-pit; The similarity of breeds, like the
height of soldiers, is maintained by leaving
out the unsuitable individuals. As to the re-
version of sheep, the fact seems to have been
proverbial in the time of Edward Fairfax, the
poetical translator of the " Jerusalem Delivered,
for in his fourth eclogue he makes Alexis exclaim,
"And let my sheep to shng-lmirert musical turn."
Mr. Darwin himself gives some striking instances
of the potency of the tendency in sheep to rever-
sion in colour, a ram with two small black spots
on his sides having begot seven black lambs in
seven white ewes, and the blackness persisting
for six or seven generations. Mr. Darwin men-
tions rabbits as one of the species of animals
which seem to countenance his views. " Finally,"
says Mr. Darwin, " from the three cases of the
rabbits which have run wild in Porto Santo,
Jamaica, and the Falkland Islands, we see that
these animals do not, under new conditions of
life, revert to or retain their aboriginal character,
as is so generally asserted to be the case by most
authors." This inference is obtained in this way.
Mr. Darwin minutely examines the bones of
wild and tame rabbits, and, finding notable
differences, says If palaeontologists had found
such differences among fossil bones, they would
have said they belonged to distinct species and
he says this, although he is well aware
that the authors of classifications have
made larva of one species perfect animals of
another, males of one species and their females
of another, and the winter bird a different
species from the summer bird. The reduction
of the numbers of so-called species is the daily
business of zoologists and botanists. No doubt,
the brains of tame rabbits from disuse do not
keep pace in size with their bodies, which by
breeding have been doubled in weight. Mr.
Darwin says, as just quoted, that rabbits do not
revert to their aboriginal character and yet in,
another place he says-" When variously-col-
oured tame rabbits are turned out in Europe,
they generally re-acquire the colouring of the
wild animal." Notwithstanding the citation of
the case of the Porto Santo rabbits to prove that
these animals do not reveal, his own account of
them is, that they descend from a litter of tame
rabbits, which have in the course of 400
years become smaller than the wild rabbits of
England. The rabbits of Jamaica have, it it said,
become extinct and certainly extinction is not
reversion. There remains the case of the Falkland
rabbits to support the denial of reversion. With-
in recent times sealers have turned out rabbits
on the Falkland Islands, and Mr. Darwin has
heard from an admiral that the rabbits on Pebble
Island are mostly hare-coloured, and on Rabbit
Island mostly bluish ; of what colour their pro-
genitors were when turned out is not known.
But the fowls may be more potent allies of the
hypothesis. From the shy habits of wild poultry,
and the impenetrability of the jungles into which
they retreat, it is not yet quite certain that the
systematic classifiers have correctly ascertained
and defined the wild species of poultry ; the
balance of proof seems, however, to be in favour
of the opinion that the breeds of table poultry
have all been derived from one of them ; although
this last view is not yet established definitively.
In Burmah, wild and tame poultry are constantly
producing transitional forms. Gallns Bankiea
is the wild species to which several of the
domestic breeds seem to revert. Mr. Tegetmoier
is the authority for the statement that purely
bred Game, Malay, Cochin, Dorking, Bantam,
and even Silk fowls may frequently or occasionally
be met with, which are almost identical in
plumage with G. Bankiva. Breeders, trying to
produce golden spangled cocks, find they have
bred instead black breasts and red backs. The
glossy black Spanish cock and the black-breasted
red game cock produce, by white hens, similar
offspring, owing to partial reversion. Mr Darwin
paired a Spanish cock and a silk hen, and the
result was a marvellous one for him : a cook
which, when strutting about, resembled not at
all his black Spanish father, and his little silky
mother, but the jungle cock very strikingly.
Ducks are probably tame mallards. The wild
duck is not known in the Malayan archipelago,
and yet the same ducks bred there do not differ
from the ducks of Europe. Men by preventing
young ducks from swimming and
flying, have made the elegant and nimble
wild animal the waddling, but heavy and
succulent table duck. Records exist of
the process by which this alteration has been
wrought. Aylesbury ducks, which are kept
in houses, hatch in January, whilst common
ducks wait until March ; but the descendants of
the early breed become as hardy as the others
when kept for a few generations in the common
way. The Aylesbury and the Labrador ducks
are both doomed true breeds, yet from a cross of
them issued a drake like a mallard. The pigeon
remains for consideration. If the pigeon does
not support it, the sooner the hypothesis is re-
canted the hotter. The breeds of pigeons have
been so recently described in this journal (sec
No. 2,100, p. 125) that it will not be necessary to
do more here than to examine the facts alleged by
Mr. Darwin in favour of his hypothesis. Pigeons re
vert astonishingly whenever they have the chance.
The permanence of the breeds of Indian Spot or
Kulmi Loans is, no doubt, asserted by Mr. Darwin,
because a description of it occurs in the " Ayeen
Akbery," which was written in the year 1860.
The fact is certainly a remarkable and impressive
example of the tenacity of hereditary
disease when its transmission is artificially fostered
by breeders who profit by it. Fifty shillings
a pair is to be obtained for pigeons who
have lost their balance. Like every other breed
the Loans are kept up by breeding and weeding.
The permanence of the breed is not a natural,
but is an artificial permanence, good for nothing,
therefore, as a fact in support of an hypothesis
which tries to explain the origin of species by
natural selection, or the preservation of favored
races in the struggle for life. A few summary
words. On the origin of species Mr. Darwin
has nothing, and is never likely to have anything,
to say ; but on the vastly important sub
J'oct of inheritance, the transmission of speech
rarities once acquired through successive gone
rations, this work is a valuable storehouse of facts
for curious students and practical breeders.
The Variation of Plants and Animals under
Domestication. By Charles Darwin, M.A.
$