(2.)
Physiological; that is, the internal nature, indicated by habits and
instincts, furnishes another safe criterion. (3.) Permanent fecundity.
The progenitors of the same species reproduce their kind from generation
to generation; the progeny of different species, although nearly allied,
do not. It is a fixed law of nature that species never can be
annihilated, except by all the individuals included in them dying out;
and that new species cannot be produced. Every true species is
primordial. It is this fact, that is, that no variety, with the
essential characteristics of species, has ever been produced, that
forces, as we saw above, Professor Huxley to pronounce Mr. Darwin's
doctrine to be an unproved hypothesis. Species continue; varieties, if
let alone, always revert to the normal type. It requires the skill and
constant attention of man to keep them distinct.
Now that there are such forms in nature, is proved not only from the
testimony of the great body of the most distinguished naturalists, but
by all the facts in the case.
First, the fact that such species are known to have existed unchanged,
through what geologists consider almost immeasurable periods of time.
Palaeontologists tell us that Trilobites abounded from the primordial age
down to the Carboniferous period, that is, as they suppose, through
millions of years. More wonderful still, the little animals whose
remains constitute the chalk formations which are spread over large
areas of country, and are sometimes a hundred feet thick, are now at
work at the bottom of the Atlantic.
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