Of endless agitation.”—The Excursion.
CHAPTER V.
Talking in beetles—Identity of Egyptian animals with those now existing: does this prove fixity of species?—Examination of the celebrated argument of species not having altered in four thousand years—Impossibility of distinguishing species from varieties—The affinities of animals—New facts proving the fertility of Hybrids—The hare and the rabbit contrasted—Doubts respecting the development hypothesis—On hypothesis in Natural History—Pliny, and his notion on the formation of pearls—Are pearls owing to a disease of the oyster?—Formation of the shell; origin of pearls—How the Chinese manufacture pearls.
A witty friend of mine expressed her sense of the remoteness of the ancient Egyptians, and her difficulty in sympathizing with them, by declaring that “they talked in beetles, you know.” She referred, of course, to the hieroglyphics in which that curious people now speak to us from ancient tombs. Whether those swarthy sages were eloquent and wise, or obscure and otherwise, in their beetle-speech, it is certain that entomologists of our day recognize their beetles as belonging to the same species that are now gathered into collections. Such as the Egyptians knew them, such we know them now. Nay, the sacred cats found in those ancient tombs, are cats of the same kind as our own familiar mousers; they purred before Pharaoh as they purr on our hearthrugs; and the descendants of the very dogs which irreligiously worried those cats, are to this day worrying the descendants of those sacred cats. The grains of wheat, which the savans found in the tombs, were planted in the soil of France, and grew into waving corn in no respect distinguishable from the corn grown from the grain of the previous year.
Have these familiar facts any important significance? Are we entitled to draw any conclusion from the testimony of paintings and sculptures, at least four thousand years old, which show that several of our well-known Species of animals, and several of the well-marked Races of men, existed then, and have not changed since then? Nimrod hunted with dogs and horses, which would be claimed as ancestors by the dogs and horses at Melton Mowbray. The Negroes who attended Semiramis and Rhamses are in every respect similar to the Negroes now toiling amid the sugar-canes of Alabama. If, during four thousand years Species and Races have not changed, why should we suppose that they ever will change? Why should we not take our stand on that testimony, and assert that Species are unchangeable?
Such has been the argument of Cuvier and his followers; an argument on which they have laid great stress, and which they have further strengthened by a challenge to adversaries to produce one single case where a transmutation of species has taken place:—“Here we show you evidence that Species have persisted unaltered during four thousand years, and you cannot show us a single case of Species having changed—you cannot show us one case of a wolf becoming a dog, an ass becoming a horse, a hare becoming a rabbit. Yet you must admit that if there were any inherent tendency to change, four thousand years is a long enough period for that tendency to display itself in; and we ought to see a very marked difference between the Species which lived under Semiramis, and those which are living under Victoria. Instead of this, we see that there has been no change: the dog has remained a dog, the horse has remained a horse; every Species retains its well-marked characters.”
No one will say that I have not done justice to this argument. I have stated it as clearly and forcibly as possible, not with any design to captivate your assent, but to make the answer complete. This argument is the cheval de bataille of the Cuvier school; but like many other argumentative war-horses, it proves, on close inspection, to be spavined and brokenwinded. The first criticism we must pass on it is, that it implies the existence of Species as a thing, which can be spoken of as fixed or variable; whereas, as we saw last month, Species is an abstraction, like Whiteness or Strength. No one supposes that there exists any whiteness apart from white things, or strength apart from strong things; yet the naturalists who maintain the fixity of Species, constantly talk as if Species existed independently of the individual animals. Instead of saying that by the word Species is indicated a certain group of characters, and that whenever we meet with this group we say, here is an animal of the same Species; they explicitly declare, or tacitly imply, that although an individual dog may vary, there is something above all individuals—the Species—and that cannot vary. As it is possible some readers may protest that no respectable authority in modern times ever held the opinion here imputed to a school, I will quote the very explicit language of one of Cuvier’s disciples—the last editor of Buffon—who, no later than 1856, could declare that “Species are the primitive forms of Nature. Individuals are nothing but the representatives—the copies of these forms: Les espèces sont les formes primitives de la Nature. Les individus n’en sont que des représentations, des copies.”[12] According to this very explicit, but very extravagant, statement, an individual dog is nothing but a copy of the primitive form—the typical dog—the idea of a dog, as Plato would say; and of course, if this be true, it matters little how widely individual dogs may vary, the type, or species, of which it is the representative, remains unaltered. Indeed it is on this ground that many physiologists explain the fact of hereditary transmission: the individual may vary, it is said, but the species is preserved; and if a dog, without its fore paws, has offspring, every one of which possesses the fore paws, the reason is, that l’idée de l’espèce se reproduit dans le fruit, et lui donne des organes qui manquaient au père ou à la mère.[13] It is not easy to understand how the idea of species can reproduce itself, and give the offspring of a dog the organs which were wanting in the parents; but to those who believe that Species exist independently of individuals, and form the only real existences, the conception may be easier.
I have too much respect for the reader to drag him through a refutation of such philosophy as this; the statement of the opinion is enough. And yet, unless some such opinion be maintained, the doctrine of Fixity of Species is without a basis; for if it be said that the group of characters which constitute the dog are incapable of change, and in this sense Species are fixed, we have to ask what evidence there can be for such an assertion? since it is notorious that individual dogs do show a change in some of the characters of the group. We shall be referred to the Egyptian tombs for evidence. M. Flourens assures us that not only are these tombs evidence that Species have not changed in four thousand years, but that no species has changed—aucune espèce n’a changé—which is surely stepping a long way beyond the precincts of the tombs?