another species? And who that is convinced of this can long undoubtingly
hold the original distinctness of turnips from cabbages as an article of
faith? On scientific grounds may not a primordial cabbage or rape be
assumed as the ancestor of all the cabbage races, on much the same ground
that we assume a common ancestry for the diversified human races? If all
Our breeds of cattle came from one stock why not this stock from the
auroch, which has had all the time between the diluvial and the historic
periods in which to set off a variation perhaps no greater than the
difference between some sorts of domestic cattle?
That considerable differences are often discernible between tertiary
individuals and their supposed descendants of the present day affords no
argument against Darwin's theory, as has been rashly thought, but is
decidedly in its favor. If the identification were so perfect that no more
differences were observable between the tertiary and the recent shells than
between various individuals of either, then Darwin's opponents, who argue
the immutability of species from the ibises and cats preserved by the
ancient Egyptians being just like those of the present day, could
triumphantly add a few hundred thousand years more to the length of the
experiment and to the force of their argument.
As the facts stand, it appears that, while some tertiary forms are
essentially undistinguishable from existing ones, others are the same with
a difference, which is judged not to be specific or aboriginal; and yet
others show somewhat greater differences, such as are scientifically
expressed by calling them marked varieties, or else doubtful species; while
others, differing a little more, are confidently termed distinct, but
nearly-related species. Now, is not all this a question of degree, of mere
gradation of difference? And is it at all likely that these several
gradations came to be established in two totally different ways--some of
them (though naturalists can't agree which) through natural variation, or
other secondary cause, and some by original creation, without secondary
cause? We have seen that the judicious Pictet answers such questions as
Darwin would have him do, in affirming that, in all probability, the
nearly-related species of two successive faunas were materially connected,
and that contemporaneous species, similarly resembling each other, were not
all created so, but have become so. This is equivalent to saying that
species (using the term as all naturalists do, and must continue to employ
the word) have only a relative, not an absolute fixity; that differences
fully equivalent to what are held to be specific may arise in the course of
time, so that one species may at length be naturally replaced by another
species a good deal like it, or may be diversified into two, three, or more
species, or forms as different as species. This concedes all that Darwin has
a right to ask, all that he can directly infer from evidence. We must add
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