Species

142 Species

species were created as they are found, and did not transmute.^130 But by the 1850s, he
had an operational view of species. While creation may have once been of importance
for him, writes his biographer Hunter Dupree, what most concerned Gray was that if
species transmuted as Lamarck, Geoffroy and the author of the Vestiges declared, then
natural history would become meaningless, one presumes because we would be unable
to specify the facts about the groups in biology that we encounter.^131 Hunter Dupree
says, “it was this inability [of unlike species to breed together—JSW] which created
the species border, not that he or any other could find this border easily, least of all by
referring to an ideal type.” Morphology was only a guide to these borders, and relied
on the experience of the naturalist and the principles of classification. The Lockean
character of this account is manifest. The real essence here is interfertility, not mor-
phology. As a result, Gray worried about hybridization, and its role in speciation. This
had been a concern since Linnaeus’ time, and the urgency of the problem was progres-
sively increasing among the naturalists of the period. Gray noted that hybrids would
stand a good chance of being fertilized by their parents and asked

In such cases they are said to revert to the type of the species of the impregnating par-

ent; but would they return exactly to that type, inheriting as they do a portion of the

blood of a cognate species?”

The modern problem of the introgression of genes into a species is foreshad-

owed here, although Gray relies on a blending inheritance model, of course, causing

swamping of the variations.

Gray’s other contribution to this topic is in his assertion that humans are a single

species. He felt that science in general and his ideas on species and hybridization

in particular pointed to the unity of the human race.^132 It is worth noting here that

Gray’s rather orthodox Protestantism seems to have had no particular impact on his

view of species, as Cuvier’s also had not. Objections to transmutation appear not to

have been founded on orthodox religious doctrine.

Pre-Darwinian Evolutionary Views of Species

... species, the subdivision where intermarriage or breeding is usually considered as

natural to animals, and where a resemblance of offspring to parents is generally per-

severed in.

Vestiges of the History of Creation^133

In German- and French-speaking countries prior to the publication of the Origin,

there were a number of specialists propounding evolutionary views of species. Of

note are Bonaparte and Unger.

(^130) Hunter Dupree 1968, 145–147.
(^131) Hunter Dupree 1968, 217.
(^132) Hunter Dupree 1968, 220.
(^133) Chambers 1844, 263.