Species

Species and the Birth of Modern Science 105

Species not originally created, but formed by the pollen of one species being absorbed

by the female organ of another species.^258

Note that Gray does not assume that the hybrids are infertile.
That species were in some manner mutable (which is perhaps how we should
contrast xism, rather than with the later transmutationism that followed Lamarck)
during the period up until the seventeenth century is held to have been the stan-
dard view.^259 Indications that species were not commonly thought to be xed in that
period can be found in the work of one of the translators of the 1611 King James
Bible, the Calvinist George Abbot (1562–1633), Archbishop of Canterbury. In his A
briefe Description of the whole world, (1605), he wrote

There be other Countries in Africke, as Agisimba, Libia interior, Nubia, and others, of

whom nothing is famous: but this may be said of Africke in generall, that it bringeth

forth store of all sorts of wild Beasts, as Elephants, Lyons, Panthers, Tygers, and the

like: yea, according to the Proverbe, Africa semper aliquid apportat novi; Often times

new and strange shapes of Beasts are brought foorth there: the reason whereof is, that

the Countrie being hott and full of Wildernesses, which haue in them little water, the

Beastes of all sortes are enforced to meete at those few watering places that be, where

often times contrary kinds haue conjunction the one with the other: so that there ariseth

new kinds of species, which taketh part of both. Such alone is the Leopard, begotten

of the Lion and the Beast called Dardus,^260 and somwhat resembling either of them.^261

It is noteworthy, though, that according to this traditional view, novel species
are formed from hybridization of extant, and presumably created, species. Thomas
Huxley and others thought that xism is due to the work of John Milton, but Milton’s
culpability is hard to determine.^262 In Paradise Lost, Book VII, the creation story of
Genesis is repeated with little change, and the term used there is “kind,” as it is in
the English Bible. Nowhere in his poetical works can I nd a hint of the constancy
or otherwise of species.
Zirkle doesn’t deal with the origin of xism except to say

The idea of the complete xity of species was beginning to take shape in other quarters

[than natural history—JSW], however, and it had become the accepted belief of the

theologians. The theologians now held that species remained just as God had made

them in the six days of creation—they remained just as God wanted them to be.^263

But I would cavil at his claims that species were therefore thought to be muta-
ble before Ray. It is not that species were not held to be xed before the seven-
teenth century; they simply had no idea of a biological species. Remember that in

(^258) Gray 1821, Vol. I, 41.
(^259) Zirkle 1959.
(^260) Possibly a panther; in Latin that would be Pardus. “Panther” was a generic name for big cats that
were neither lions nor tigers.
(^261) Nicolson 2003, 160. I am indebted to Tom Scharle for the reference. This is clearly based on Aristotle
in Book VIII of the Historia animalium.
(^262) Huxley 1893, 62.
(^263) Zirkle 1959, 642.