Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    226/242 (page 208)
    Paralysis, with a double flower, different kinds from those with a single? I answer, it is true they doso; but if we examine and consider wherein their differences consist, we shall find reason to doubt whether they be specifically dis- tinct or no; nay, rather to conclude, they are not. First, as for flowers. The main, if not only difference between these pretended new species and the old, we shall find to consist either in the colour of the flower, or the multi- plicity of its leaves. Now that neither of these is suffi- cient to infer a specifical difference, is, I think, evident, unless we will admit that an European and an Ethiopian are two species of men, because one is black and the other white; or an European and an Indian, because the one hath a thick beard, and the other none at all, or but a few straggling hairs instead of it; the whole diversity being induced by the climate, or soil, or nourishment, as in other animals, is manifest. First, what effect the plenty and diversity of food, and different manner of living hath, appears in domestic animals, ez. gr. swine, ducks, geese, &c., which do frequently vary their colours; whereas the wild of those kinds retain constantly the same; and not their colours only, but the tastes of their flesh, it requiring no very critical palate to distinguish between the flesh of tame and wild beasts, or fowl. As for the colour, though wild animals taken and brought up tame do not usually themselves 2” zxdividuo change their colours, . but after two or three generations their breed; but sometimes they do, as 1 myself have seen a bull-finch, which kept in a cage, after some years, from the usual colour of that bird, turned to be coal black. 2. What influence the diversity of soil and climate hath upon divers animals as to the altermg their colour, and other accidents, appears in divers instances. From the difference of climate, or constant mspection of snow, it proceeds that in the Alps and other hgh mountains, and also in those cold northern countries where the earth, for more than half the year, is continually covered with snow, there are found many animals white of those sorts,