Letter to the Rev. John Bachman, D.D., on the question of hybridity in animals : considered in reference to the unity of the human species / by Samuel George Morton.
- Samuel George Morton
- Date:
- 1850
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Letter to the Rev. John Bachman, D.D., on the question of hybridity in animals : considered in reference to the unity of the human species / by Samuel George Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![by common consent, admit Professor Owen to be the lineal heir of the mantle of Cuvier, it is also manifest that some persons have enquired into the present subject more deeply than that eminent naturalist has done. Independently of the evidence derived from the family of birds (which will be stated hereafter) that different species of animals do vol- untarily unite even in the wild state, I will now give some examples from the mammiferous class. Sir W. Jardine, speaking of the domestic cat, has the following para- graph : We have no doubt that since its (the Egyptian cat's) introduction into Great Britain and more particularly to the north of Scotland, there has been occasional crossing with our own native species, and that the results of these crosses have been kept in our houses. We have seen many cats closely resembling the wild cat, and one or two that were very tame, which could scarcely be distinguished from it,* Bewick also observes, that the wild cat of Europe (Felis cattus) is said not unfrequently to cross with the common cat, which last rears a family; and he adds, that this explains the not unusual resemblance of the tame to the wild species.f Nor does it seem that these hybrids are any less prolific than the parent stocks. Cuvier himself suggests that the Bos frontalis of Lambert, a domes- tic breed of cattle in the north-west of India, may be descended from a union of the buffalo (Bos bubalus) the indigenus animal of that coun- try, and the common species/]; Thus Cuvier suspects the Bos frontalis, now so numerous in Hindostan, to be a prolific hybrid; and it may be relevantly added that the same great naturalist records his suspicion that the singular varieties of the domestic pigeon are derived not solely from one species, the columba livia, but that they have arisen from the union of that species with another but unknown bird of the same genus. Buffon states that in Champagne, in the year 1776, eight young wolves were found, which were satisfactorily traced to the parentage of a common dog and she wolf. They were all killed wild in the forest, while young; thus preventing any chance of their re-producing among themselves. A wild cross was also found near Metz, in the year 1784 ; and another in Normandy ten years earlier.§ The ancients averred, without hesitation, that the dog, in some coun- * Naturalist's Library, vol. ii, p. 243. Felinse. f Quadrupeds, p. 228. \ Animal Kingdom, I. p. 201. § Buffon op. citat. xxxii., p. 231, 329, 333.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21142592_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
