Note 185 — Chapter XXXII · Distribution of Mammalia throughout the Earth.

The attention of the scientific world in France has been recently directed to the advantages that might arise from the naturalization of the Llama tribe in Europe, and especially of its two most useful species, the Llama and the Alpaca. M. J. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, a zoologist of some note, but rather carried away by theoretical views in a branch of science where observation, and observation alone, ought to be our guide, and ignorant perhaps of what had been done in England on the same subject, where the experiment had long since been tried, and with very inadequate success, has presented lately some papers to the Academy of Sciences on this subject. We cannot imagine, even if the naturalization of the Llama on a large scale was possible, what benefit could arise from it to our agriculturists. The wool of the llama is coarse, and so infinitely inferior to the commonest qualities of sheep’s wool, that in its native country it is seldom used for any other purpose than the manufacture of ropes, of a rough carpeting and packing-cloth, and for the coarsest apparel of the poor Indian. As to its use as a beast of burden, whilst the llama eats as much as the ass, it does not carry more than one half what he can, and can scarcely travel one half of the same daily distance; besides, the female llama is useless in this respect. The flesh of the llama, as above stated, is greatly below that of all our domestic animals, even of the Italian buffalo.

As to the Alpaca, it is very doubtful if, living as it does in an extremely dry, elevated, equable, and clear atmosphere, it would ever become accustomed to the damp and variable climate of our northern latitudes, or to that of the great European chains of mountains, the Alps and the Pyrenees, and if it did, that its wool would not be greatly deteriorated. As to the vicuña, it is purely a wild species, and has hitherto resisted all the efforts of the aborigines, the most patient and docile of the human race, to render it prolific in its own climate and in domesticity.

It appears, therefore, that the domestication of the several species of Auchenia in Europe would be a costly and useless experiment, on the large scale on which it is proposed to try it; indeed, this will appear evident when it is known that in the Peru-Bolivian Andes the llama and alpaca are daily disappearing to make room for the more useful and profitable breed of the common European sheep, whilst, as a beast of burden, the ass is everywhere taking its place.

Connected with this subject, a very singular fact, and, if well established, a very curious one, has been announced by M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, on the authority of one of our countrymen, Dr. Weddel, recently returned from South America, that a cross-breed between the Alpaca and the Vicuña had been obtained, and that the mules from this cross-breed were capable of reproducing this newly-created species, the wool of which is represented to be of a valuable quality. Now, if there exists in zoological science a fact clearly established, it is this: that within historical periods no new species of vertebrate animal has been created—in fact, the great law of the immutability of species. The remains of the several wild animals which have been buried for more than 30 centuries in the catacombs of Egypt, and in the ruins of Nineveh, are perfectly identical with those now existing in the most minute details of their anatomical structure. We have examined, in the case referred to, the evidence adduced by M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire in support of his favourite doctrine, and we do not by any means consider it sufficient to shake the conclusions arrived at by all the great zoologists of past and present times—by the Cuviers, the Humboldts, and the Owens of our own period—on the impossibility of the production of a new species of animals, or the immutability of species in the animal creation. Contradictions to this law we know have been brought forward by writers of the theoretical school of naturalists, to support favourite theories of their authors; but we believe such dangerous doctrines are founded on the vagaries of a school which have ever placed in natural history observation in the back, and the dreams of imagination in the foreground.