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our experience of the present. And this indeed is one of
the axioms of geological science. Naturally those who
believe that Organic Evolution can only be brought about
to-day by Natural Selection, will assume that it was so
from the first, as now. But those who believe that there
has been an Organic Evolution without Natural Selection
in the present, and that Natural Selection is impossible
now, will search for evidence to show the operation of
other laws, and haply to find actual evidence that Natural
Selection could not act, then, any more than at the present
time. And this is what I shall now attempt to establish.
We have an illustration of Mr. Darwin’s use of this
inference from known facts in the case of the ancon ram
and the turnspit dog. We know that the variety of the
ancon ram arose suddenly, and was endowed with the
power of impressing its own likeness upon its offspring
We know that the same phenomenon has been repeated in
the case of the japanned peacock and the Mauchamp ram.
No one could have guessed what was the origin of the
ancon and other breeds, had it not been a matter of
experience ; but from this experience Mr. Darwin infers,
that “ some of the peculiarities of the several breeds of the
dog have probably arisen suddenly—for instance, the
shape of the legs and body in the turnspit of Europe.”
That the ancon variation may have appeared in nature,
and has so appeared, is obvious from the fact that there
are ancon jaguars in Paraguay and ancon pariah dogs
in India. Mr. Darwin, on the ground of these facts, infers
that the turnspit dogs depicted on the tombs of Egypt
in remote historical times, may have arisen in a similar
manner.
We have seen the immense difference which exists
between the improved pigs and the common pigs, and
still more the wild boar. A similar difference obtains