RECORD: Frost, S. T. 1867. Darwin and Domestication. Harper's new monthly magazine 36 (Issue 211): 58-63.
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed (single key) by AEL Data
RECORD: Frost, S. T. 1867. Darwin and Domestication. Harper's new monthly magazine 36 (Issue 211): 58-63.
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed (single key) by AEL Data, corrections by John van Wyhe 8.2009. RN1
DARWIN AND DOMESTICATION.
FIVE centuries ago all science was searching for the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life. It did not find them, indeed, but it did discover acids—hydrochloric, sulphuric, and nitric; some medicines, many salts, matches, and other items of plain utility, and gunpowder, paper, the compass. Engraving, painting, and printing may be credited to the activity of thought and the habit of keen scrutiny which the glorious delusion excited. So the popular problem of Science, in this its age of adolescence, is the Origin of Species, the Origin and Succession of Life. The prospects of a solution—a scientific one at least—are certainly not positive or promising; but the value of the facts which will be developed incidentally by pushes of investigation thus stimulated is beyond all present estimate. Especially is this evident since the subject has placed itself upon grounds where discussion, though it may not attain the desired solution, is certain to call out needed facts. Novelty, boldness, and a play for speculation have been hitherto the chief attractions to its pursuit. Now for the first it promises practical results. What was a problem of Speculative Science is becoming a principle of domestic art. This result is mostly due, whether intentionally or not, to Darwin and his school.
Let us first, by way of introduction, give the outlines of the progress of that theory which has lately assumed a most unexpected form in the views of these philosophers; and then consider it in its new relation to the subject of Domestication. Investigation on this ground may or may not find a perch for wandering speculation; but it must afford improved and more intelligent views of the rearing of horses, cattle, sheep, and fowls; the limitations which Nature sets to the high breeding of animals and the overculture of fruits; how far disease is incident to domestication, and how far it may be avoided—points so little regarded or understood. It should find a remedy for the European Rinderpest, for the abortion in Herkimer dairies; it may give a favorable explanation of the unpleasant fact that sheep and peachtrees are becoming exotics, beef and apples luxuries, and pork poison—in short, failure and fabulous prices of meats and fruits, the common food of the world. But to begin.
We can readily understand how strong is the temptation to set up the theory of the transmutation of the species. The very earliest naturalists noticed how the grades of life seemed to pass insensibly one into another; but the upright apes were probably unknown, and the connecting link with man thus wanting, the theory lacked that fascination which was imparted when, with the discovery of the chimpanzee and gorilla, man also, as is claimed, was made to fall into the line. This is, indeed, the first ground afforded to the theory—a kind of obvious connection of life on the earth. This connection, as it first meets the eye, very liberally stated, would be somewhat as follows: If we should from a line beginning, say with the sponge, at the foot and ending with the highest type of man of the nineteenth century at the head, arranging all the intermediate forms in such a manner that each should stand between the two nearest like it, there would doubtless be revealed to any observer, however unscientific and unpracticed, a most surprising and evident
relation of each to its fellows, and through them to all. And when we should further find that increased knowledge tends to fill up occasional breaks, that we may almost anticipate unarranged and undiscovered life as we might legitimately supply missing bones to a strange skeleton, the line appears to become a chain, and separation into species like cutting links. For as they first meet the eye the costume, habits, manners, and personal appearance of the upright apes differ scarcely more from the Digger or Bushmen than these from their Caucasian brethren; the monkey is an easy step lower; the squirrel is much like the monkey; the bird is a quadruped using its fore-feet to beat the air instead of the earth, more like a monkey than a butterfly for all its wings; the reptile quadrupeds with their webbed feet are only one step from the fishes, which have parted with their hind-feet, but have two good arms in the shoulder fins; the snail is reduced to one organ of motion—but this is the result of bringing hands and feet together, and consolidating them into one, the curve of the back witnessing the process; and, lastly, the jelly-fish has no limb, and appears to be only a sponge with power to move by squeezing itself out. Remembering now that the sponge is claimed sometimes as animal, sometimes as vegetable life, and compromising by treating it as a connection between the two, the gradation is thus continued on through animals into plants, down through ferns, fungi, mildew, fermentation, froth, and what not.
Such a view requires comparative anatomy not to be too critical, but the connection will really bear closer and more sci