gists, to say if, in the vast majority of
cases, they know, or mean to affirm anything more of the group of
animals or plants they so denominate than what has just been stated.
Even the most decided advocates of the received doctrines respecting
species admit this.

"I apprehend," says Professor Owen,* "that few naturalists nowadays, in
describing and proposing a name for what they call 'a new species,' use
that term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago;
that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive
distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. The proposer of the
new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, for
example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character
are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation has
reached; and that they are not due to domestication or to artificially
superinduced external circumstances, or to any outward influence within
his cognizance; that the species is wild, or is such as it appears by
Nature." ([Footnote] *On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs:
Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858.)

If we consider, in fact, that by far the largest proportion of recorded
existing species are known only by the study of their skins, or bones,
or other lifeless exuvia; that we are acquainted with none, or next to
none, of their physiological peculiarities, beyond those which can be
deduced from their structure, or are open to cursory observation; and
that we cannot hope to learn more of any of those extinct forms of life
which now constitute no inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora and
Fauna of the world: it is obvious that the definitions of these species
can be only of a purely structural, or morphological, character. It is
probable that naturalists would have avoided much confusion of ideas
if they had more frequently borne the necessary limitations of our
knowledge in mind. But while it may safely be admitted that we are
acquainted with only the morphological characters of the vast majority
of species--the functional or physiological, peculiarities of a few have
been carefully investigated, and the result of that study forms a large
and most interesting portion of the physiology of reproduction.

The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the
more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial
miracles she offers to h