in ability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of
contending with their more vigorous neighbours. The colour of this
vigorous race I take for granted, from what has been already said, would be
dark. But the same disposition to form varieties still existing, a darker
and a darker race would in the course of time occur: and as the darkest
would be the best fitted for the climate, this would at length become the
most prevalent, if not the only race, in the particular country in which it
had originated." He then extends these same views to the white inhabitants
of colder climates. I am indebted to Mr. Rowley, of the United States, for
having called my attention, through Mr. Brace, to the above passage of Dr.
Wells' work.

The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, afterward Dean of Manchester, in the fourth
volume of the "Horticultural Transactions", 1822, and in his work on the
"Amaryllidaceae" (1837, pages 19, 339), declares that "horticultural
experiments have established, beyond the possibility of refutation, that
botanical species are only a higher and more permanent class of varieties."
He extends the same view to animals. The dean believes that single species
of each genus were created in an originally highly plastic condition, and
that these have produced, chiefly by inter-crossing, but likewise by
variation, all our existing species.

In 1826 Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph in his well-known
paper ("Edinburgh Philosophical Journal", vol. XIV, page 283) on the
Spongilla, clearly declares his belief that species are descended from
other species, and that they become improved in the course of modification.
This same view was given in his Fifty-fifth Lecture, published in the
"Lancet" in 1834.

In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on "Naval Timber and