Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/831

Rh vegetable, from one entire kingdom lie is altogether cut off.!Nor was he ever a zoöphyte, a mollusc, a fish, a reptile, a whale, a carnivore, or a rodent, and the palpable moral and physical characteristics of certain of these species which are plainly inherited at times by man (for who has not made acquaintance with the human mollusc, or come into unpleasant contact with the tiger, wolf, fox, ox, or dog type?) may be explained as reversions to species which the human pedigree just touched as it skirted their base.

Lastly, it is consistent with the analogy that the embryo should sometimes outstrip its parent species. Each generation being an advance upon its predecessors, each new embryo must possess new potentialities of development. Even in apparently stationary species there will usually be a capacity of adjustment to changed circumstances.

In the parallelism between the embryo and the species lies the key to colonial evolution. The genesis and growth of each colony repeat the origin and development of its parent state. There is again, no exact reproduction. Much in the history of every country belongs to what we call the chapter of accidents because we have not yet found its law. This may or may not be reproduced in a colony. There is also a good deal in the history of every colony determined by local circumstances. For all such it would be in vain to look for an analogue in the mother country's development. On certain lines the analogy conspicuously fails in appearance, but even on these there will always be discoverable traces in the new of the corresponding stages in the old country. In others it would be a mere academic exercise to trace fantastic resemblances. None the less is it true that up to the point in the growth of a colony when it ceases to be dependent on its metropolis the political and social evolution recapitulates in a few years the entire evolution which the mother country may have taken centuries to accomplish.

Colonial history will thus reflect light on national history, and national history profoundly studied will make colonial history luminous. What would not a Mommsen or other reconstructor of ancient civilizations from often enigmatical inscriptions on chancefound stones have given to discover such a wealth of material in the correspondence of Romans and provincials, in dispatches, books, pamphlets, and newspapers, as we possess in relation to the early foundation of colonies? In a sense he already possesses it. It is ancient history that we are studying when we peruse these modern records. The beginnings of extinct states rise again before our eyes. Obscure struggles, "battles of kites and crows," the long travail of national growth, will emerge from the dark. More than this: as the biologist assumes the existence of undiscovered species, the historian