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      <OcrText>CORRESPONDENCE. 183 



[We much regret that we are unable to complete Mr. Tuffen West's 

 valuable Notes in the present issue. The remainder, with the 

 "Selected Notes from Note-Books " having reference thereto, with 

 the explanation of Plates XVI., XVII., and XVIIL, will be 

 given in our next. — Editor?^ 



Corrceponbcnce. 



\The Editor does ?iot hold himself responsible for the opitiions or 

 statements of his co-respondents^ 



Sir,— 



In the Journal of Microscopy, etc., for April, Mr. Wheatcroft 

 draws special attention to the fact that in studying the plant- 

 remains found in Egyptians tombs, Dr. Schweinforth has not 

 been " able to detect any peculiarities in the living plants which 

 are absent in those obtained from the tombs." Mr. Wheatcroft 

 says these specimens were gathered at least four thousand years 

 ago, and he thinks it " would be difficult to produce better 

 evidence of permanency of type." Precisely this argument was 

 used with reference to the theory of permanency of type in 

 animals. We v/ere told that the domestic cat, whether in the 

 mummical state or in its pictured representations, was just the 

 same in that remote Egyptian age as it is at the present day. 

 But we know now that instead of finding permanency of type as 

 the prevailing law amongst animals, we find species and orders 

 fading into one another like dissolving views as we penetrate 

 further back into the abyss of time. The changes are very 

 gradual ; to lose a tooth would be far too sudden a transition. 

 One cusp disappears, and then another ; then the tooth appears 

 later, grows smaller, decays early, and finally disappears altogether. 

 The same gradual changes occur in the modifications of the whole 

 skeleton, but most noticeably in the limbs. The cat, so " exactly 

 like " our cat of the present day, changes by almost imperceptible 

 degrees into an animal which is neither cat nor weasel, but the 

 progenitor of both ; the dog into an animal which is neither bear 

 nor dog, but which has some characteristics of the two modern 

 species. 



It is difficult to imagine how any paleontologist of the present 

 day could expect that an animal would be likely to change 

 perceptibly in such a brief second of geological time as four 

 thousand years. The whole of the Tertiary period can only be 



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      <OcrText>184 CORRESPONDENCE. 



expressed as a fraction when compared with the vast ages which 

 must have elapsed wliilst the paleozoic and the mesozoic rocks 

 were laid down ; and the post-tertiary, when man (as we know 

 him) and the modern species of animals took their rise, is a mere 

 insignificant sediment compared even to the tertiary period. 

 How, then, shall we express the geological_insignificance of the 

 human historical period ? 



Under domestication, it is true that the progress of evolution 

 is more rapid than under normal circumstances. Yet man, so far 

 as I am aware, has only succeeded in accelerating the evolution of 

 one new family, that of the domestic dog, which can be traced 

 through distinct lines of descent from the wolf and jackal. But 

 the domestic dog becomes a true dog long before the oldest 

 Egyptian mummy received its wrappings ; ^the cat, a far more 

 modern and highly specialized carnivore, has not had time to 

 change since it was first domesticated. 



What has all this to do with plants ? may fairly be asked. I 

 do not pretend to any acquaintance with paleobotany, but I 

 cannot help thinking that the laws which govern one great branch 

 of living beings govern also the other, and that as animals vary by 

 slow degrees during the vast ages of geological time, so plants 

 must also change. We see cultivated plants alter just as rapidly 

 under the hand of man, as domesticated animals; we see the 

 forest tree of warm regions become the creeping shrub of Arctic 

 climes ; therefore, we know that vegetable forms vary with the 

 action of their environment as do animals. There is also the 

 same tendency to the late evolution of higher forms which we see 

 in animals, and a tendency in some of the lower forms to dwindle 

 away ; as witness the giant calamites of the coal forests^ as com- 

 pared with the pigmy horsetails of the present day. The Equiseta 

 are to the calamites much what the modern newt is as compared 

 with the ancient labyrinthodont. My contention is not as to any 

 point of paleobotany, of which I am certainly not qualified to 

 judge, but only as to the utter insufificiency of the^time which has 

 elapsed since Egypt was a civilised kingdom, to^ produce' new 

 species of either animals or plants. 



Should anyone wish to see how almost imperceptibly, but how 

 surely, Nature works in altering " types," I would refer him to 

 some of the later lectures of Professor Cope, in his " Origin of 

 the Fittest." A more popular account is given by Oscar Schmidt 

 in "The Mammalia" International Scientific Series. 



Yours faithfully, 



Alice Bodington. 



Vancouver. 



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