need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many smaller for the second?"* Buffon answers these questions thus: "Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts themselves;-are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?" (How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought, and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture only; the vaunted *Tom. iv. p. 102, 1760. light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, prove repugnant alike to religion and common sense?" * This is Buffon's way. Whenever he has shown us clearly what we ought to think, he stops short suddenly on religious grounds. It is incredible that the writer who at the very commencement of his work makes man take his place among the animals, and who sees a subtle gradation extending over all living beings "from the most perfect creature"-who must be man-"to the most entirely inorganic substance"-I say it is incredible that such a writer should not see that he had made out a stronger case in favour of the reason of animals than against it. According to him, the test whether a thing is to have such and such a name is whether it looks fairly like other things to which the same name is given; if it does, it is to have the name; if it does not, it is not. No one accepted this lesson more heartily than Dr. Darwin, whose shrewd and homely mind, if not so great as Buffon's, was still one of no common order. Let us see the view he took of this matter. He writes : "If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects which are formed into societies, as the bees, wasps, and ants, I make no doubt but we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar *Tom. iv. p. 103, 1753. and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same manner from experience and tradition, as the arts of our own species; though their reasoning is from fewer ideas, is busied about fewer objects, and is executed with less energy." And again, a little later: 66 According to the late observations of Mr. Hunter, it appears that beeswax is not made from the dust of the anthers of flowers, which they bring home on their thighs, but that this makes what is termed bee-bread, and is used for the purpose of feeding the bee-maggots; in the same way butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey? . . . If these are not deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts." † Or again : "Common worms stop up their holes with leaves or straws to prevent the frost from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them. The habits of peace or the stratagems of war of these subterranean nations are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling green, and he presently returned much wounded about the head, . . . which evinces * Dr. Darwin, 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1796. they have design in stopping the mouths of their habitations." * Does it not look as if Dr. Darwin had in his mind the very passage of Buffon which I have been last quoting? and is it likely that the facts which were accepted by Dr. Darwin without question, or the conclusions which were obvious to him, were any less accepted by or obvious to Buffon? The Goat-Hybridism. In his prefatory remarks upon the goat, Buffon complains of the want of systematic and certified experiment as to what breeds and species will be fertile inter se, and with what results. The passage is too long to quote, but is exceedingly good, and throughout involves belief in a very considerable amount of modification in the course of successive generations. I may give the following as an example: "We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or ass-whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed with our own -whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of which there are many different breeds. Our ignorance concerning all these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from the life and * Dr. Darwin,' Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 186. fortune of an ordinary man. I have spent many years in experiments of this kind, and will give my results when I come to my chapter on mules; but I may as well say at once that they have thrown but little light upon the subject, and have been for the most part unsuccessful." "But these," he continues, "are the very points which must determine our whole knowledge concerning animals, their right division into species, and the true understanding of their history." He proposes therefore, in the present lack of knowledge, "to regard all animals as different species which do not breed together under our eyes," and to leave time and experiment to correct mistakes.† The Pig-Doctrine of Final Causes. We have seen that the doctrine of the mutability of species has been unfortunately entangled with that of final causes, or the belief that every organ and every part of each animal or plant has been designed to serve some purpose useful to the animal, and this not only useful at some past time, but useful now, and for all time to come. He who believes species to be mutable will see in many organs signs of the history of the individual, but nothing more. Buffon, as I have said, is causes in the sense ex explicit in his denial of final pressed above. After pointing out that the pig is an animal whose relation to other animals it is difficult to define, he says: "In a word, it is of a nature altogether equivocal † Ibid. p. 64. * Tom. v. p. 63, 1755. |