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.

    230/242 (page 212)
    I am not ignorant that some do make the differences of great and little singly, to be sufficient notes whereon to ground a distinction of species. So in Parkinson and Gerard’s ‘ Herbals’, we find many plants put down for distinct species, which the authors themselves confess to differ m no other pomt than in being in all parts less the one than the other. Now though I grant there are certain bounds and measures of littleness, and greatness, which both plants and animals cannot exceed or fall short of; as for example, a sheep will never come to be so big as an elephant, nor so little as a mouse; nor a gooseberry-bush so tall as an oak, or so low and small as Adianthum aureum minus, when grown to its stature, be it in what country you please; yet is there a very great latitude in this particular between many plants of the same species, the difference of ten, nay twenty to one beimg only in magnitude; which difference is yet wholly to be imputed either to the richness or poverty of the soil, the moistness or drought of the season, the coldness or heat of the climate, or some other accident; which is evident in that if you take the seed of the smallest and - poorest plant in its kind, provided it will admit culture, and sow it in a rich soil well watered, you shall soon get an offspring ten times as great as their mother plants. Nay, take a root of a perennial, and removable plant, from off a cold barren mountain, and plant it in a fat warm garden, and it shall attaim twice the stature or dimensions it would have gotten had it remamed in its native place. ‘The like is observed in animals, we having here in England of sheep, from five to fifty pound a score; and of beasts, from three to twenty pound apiece. This is all I have to say to the first question. The second question is, whether there have been, or may be, any species lost or destroyed? ‘To which I answer, 1. That though it is absolutely and physically possible, yet it is highly improbable, that any species should be lost. 2. Though some species should be