Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1859

may represent eleven Silurian genera, some of which have produced large groups of modified descendants. Every intermediate link between these eleven genera and their primordial parent, and every intermediate link in each branch and sub-branch of their descendants, may be supposed to be still alive; and the links to be as fine as those between the finest varieties. In this case it would be quite impossible to give any definition by which the several members of the several groups could be distinguished from their more immediate parents; or these parents from their ancient and unknown progenitor. Yet the natural arrangement in the diagram would still hold good; and, on the principle of inheritance, all the forms descended from A, or from I, would have something in common. In a tree we can specify this or that branch, though at the actual fork the two unite and blend together. We could not, as I have said, define the several groups; but we could pick out types, or forms, representing most of the characters of each group, whether large or small, and thus give a general idea of the value of the differences between them. This is what we should be driven to, if we were ever to succeed in collecting all the forms in any class which have lived throughout all time and space. We shall certainly never succeed in making so perfect a collection: nevertheless, in certain classes, we are tending in this direction; and Milne Edwards has lately insisted, in an able paper, on the high importance of looking to types, whether or not we can separate and define the groups to which such types belong.

Finally, we have seen that natural selection, which results from the struggle for existence, and which almost inevitably induces extinction and divergence of character in the many descendants from one dominant parent-species, explains that great and universal feature

may represent eleven Silurian genera, some of which have produced large groups of modified descendants. Every intermediate link between these eleven genera and their primordial parent, and every intermediate link in each branch and sub-branch of their descendants, may be supposed to be still alive; and the links to be as fine as those between the finest varieties. In this case it would be quite impossible to give any definition by which the several members of the several groups could be distinguished from their more immediate parents; or these parents from their ancient and unknown progenitor. Yet the natural arrangement in the diagram would still hold good; and, on the principle of inheritance, all the forms descended from A, or from I, would have something in common. In a tree we can specify this or that branch, though at the actual fork the two unite and blend together. We could not, as I have said, define the several groups; but we could pick out types, or forms, representing most of the characters of each group, whether large or small, and thus give a general idea of the value of the differences between them. This is what we should be driven to, if we were ever to succeed in collecting all the forms in any class which have lived throughout all time and space. We shall assuredly never succeed in making so perfect a collection: nevertheless, in certain classes, we are tending in this direction; and Milne Edwards has lately insisted, in an able paper, on the high importance of looking to types, whether or not we can separate and define the groups to which such types belong.