| →
the Action of
1869 |
|
the Action of
1872 |
| OMIT 1866 |
|
| →
Extinction,
1869 |
|
Extinction,
1866 |
|
Extinction
,
1872 |
|
| → has 1869 1872 |
| ought to have 1859 1860 1861 1866 |
|
|
adapted to digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh alone, draws most nutriment from these substances. So in the general economy of any land, the more widely and perfectly the animals and plants are diversified for different habits of life, so will a greater number of individuals be capable of there supporting themselves. A set of animals, with their organisation but little diversified, could hardly compete with a set more perfectly diversified in structure. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the Australian marsupials, which are divided into groups differing but little from each other, and feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse and others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and rodent mammals, could successfully compete with these
orders. In the Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification in an early and incomplete stage of development. |
|
→
the Action of
→
Extinction,
|
| After the foregoing discussion, which
→has
been much
we
assume that the modified descendants of any one species will succeed
so much the better as they become more diversified in structure, and are thus enabled to encroach on places occupied by other beings. Now let us see how this principle of
benefit being derived from divergence of character, combined with the principles of natural selection and of extinction,
to act. |
|
| The accompanying diagram will aid us in understanding this rather perplexing subject. Let A to L represent the species of a genus large in its own country; these species are supposed to resemble each other in unequal
as is so generally the case in
|
