ed them did not leave sufficient time for the
productions of the changes that are alleged to have taken place.

"In order to reply to those naturalists who acknowledge that the
varieties of animals are restrained by nature within certain limits,
it would be necessary to examine how far these limits extend. This is
a very curious inquiry, and in itself exceedingly interesting under
a variety of relations, but has been hitherto very little attended
to....

"Wild animals which subsist upon herbage feel the influence of climate a
little more extensively, because there is added to it the influence
of food, both in regard to its abundance and its quality. Thus the
elephants of one forest are larger than those of another; their tusks
also grow somewhat longer in places where their food may happen to be
more favorable for the production of the substance of ivory. The same
may take place in regard to the horns of stags and reindeer. But let
us examine two elephants, the most dissimilar that can be conceived,
we shall not discover the smallest difference in the number and
articulations of the bones, the structure of the teeth, etc.........

"Nature appears also to have guarded against the alterations of species
which might proceed from mixture of breeds by influencing the various
species of animals with mutual aversion from one another. Hence all
the cunning and all the force that man is able to exert is necessary
to accomplish such unions, even between species that have the nearest
resemblances. And when the mule breeds that are thus produced by these
forced conjunctions happen to be fruitful, which is seldom the case,
this fecundity never continues beyond a few generations, and would not
probably proceed so far without a continuance of the same cares which
excited it at first. Thus we never see in a wild state intermediate
productions between the hare and the rabbit, between the stag and the
doe, or between the marten and the weasel. But the power of man changes
this established order, and continues to produce all these intermixtures
of which the various species are susceptible, but which they would never
produce if left to themselves.

"The degrees of these variations are proportional to the intensity of
the causes that produced them--namely, the slavery or subjection
under which those animals are to man. They do not proceed far in
half-domesticated species. In the cat, for example, a softer or harsher
fur, more brilliant