The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

M. Godron, on the contrary, understood the nature of the phenomenon, and demonstrated it experimentally. He crossed the Ægilops and the wheat, and obtained the first plant of Requien, the Ægilops triticoïdes of Fabre. He again crossed this hybrid with the true wheat, and reproduced the pretended artificial wheat of the Montpellier botanist. He gave to it the name of Ægilops speltæformis.

It is this latter form, having as we see three-fourths of the true wheat, and a fourth of the Ægilops, that M. Godron has cultivated at Nancy since 1857. The clever naturalist who has produced it, believes that he has not had one case of reversion like those at Montpellier and those of Fabre. But at the same time he informs us that the most minute and special precautions alone can preserve this artificial plant. The ground must be prepared with the greatest care, and each seed placed by hand in the desired position. If put into the ground carelessly, or scattered over the bed, the seeds never germinate. M. Godron considered that the Ægilops speltæformis would entirely disappear, perhaps in a single year, if left to itself.

VII. Finally, the characters of hybrids are: infertility, as a general rule, and, in the exceptions, a very limited fertility; series suddenly cut short either by infertility, by disordered variation, or by reversion without atavism.

The Ægilops triticoïdes alone seems to stand in opposition to all other known facts. This exception is undoubtedly remarkable, but does not in any way impair our general conclusions. A product of human industry, this hybrid plant only exists by virtue of the same industry, and cannot, from any point of view, be compared to the succession of mongrel individuals which are unceasingly propagated without our aid, and in spite of our precautions, in the midst of our animal and vegetable races.

“But,” say those writers who deny the reality of a distinction between species and race, “what man has done nature must be able to do also, for she governs space and time, and is therefore more powerful than man.” This form of argument rests upon a confusion of ideas and a strange neglect of the most ordinary facts.

Most true, nature is more powerful than man in certain cases and for certain ends, but man also has his domain, in which he is much superior to nature. Natural forces act in virtue of blind and necessary laws, the result of which is constant. Now man has acquired the knowledge of these laws, he has made use of them to constrain and master the natural forces one after another, he now knows how to exaggerate some and to weaken others. In this manner he changes their resultants, and obtains products which nature herself could not realise. Give to the latter all the time and space that you will, she would never be able either to produce or preserve potassium or sodium in a metallic form; in spite of the physico-chemical forces, or rather by directing them, man has obtained and preserved these two metals, as he has obtained and preserved the Ægilops triticoïdes, which is destroyed by the inflexibility of natural forces as soon as it is exposed to their action.

VIII. The infertility, or, if you will, the restricted and rapidly limited fertility between species, and the impossibility of natural forces, when left to themselves, producing series of intermediary beings between two given specific types, is one of those general facts which we call a law. This fact has an importance in the organic world equal to that rightly attributed to attraction in the sidereal world. It is by virtue of the latter that the celestial bodies preserve their respective distances, and complete their orbits in the admirable order revealed by astronomy. The law of the sterility of species produces the same result, and maintains between species and between different groups in animals and plants all those relations, which, in the palæontological ages, as well as in our own, form the marvellous whole of the Organic Empire.

Imagine the suppression of the laws which govern attraction in the heavens, and what chaos would immediately be the result. Suppress upon earth the law of crossing, and the confusion would be immense. It is scarcely possible to say where it would stop. After a few generations the groups which we call genera, families, orders, and classes would most certainly have disappeared, and the branches also would rapidly have become affected. It is clear that only a few centuries would elapse before the animal and vegetable kingdoms fell into the most complete disorder. Now order has existed in both kingdoms since the epoch when organised beings first peopled the solitudes of our globe, and it could only have been established and preserved by virtue of the impossibility of a fusion of species with each other through indifferently and indefinitely fertile crossings.

IX. There are some writers, very often entirely unacquainted with the natural sciences, who, labouring under the most varied prejudices, especially that of exaggerating the transmutation doctrines which I shall presently discuss, have denied the reality of species; they affirm that there are no serious barriers between the groups designated by this term, and have compared it in a more or less formal manner to the groups always somewhat arbitrarily called genera, tribes, families, orders, etc. Though only a brief recapitulation, the preceding facts would be sufficient to answer them. It is, however, necessary to mention the principal objections which are brought forward against such ideas, and to shew how they may be refuted.

1st. It is useless to take any notice o£ the good humoured or malicious banter, of the raillery and sarcasm too often made use of by some writers against those who admit the reality of species. It is evident that those who employ such weapons do not address themselves to men of science, but appeal directly to the passions. We cannot sufficiently express our regret at seeing men of undoubted merit resorting to such means.