| → Still 1861 1866 1869 |
| We see still 1872 |
|
| → take, as the standard of high organisation, the amount of 1869 |
| look at the 1861 1866 |
| take as the standard of high organisation, the amount of 1872 |
|
| → OMIT 1869 1872 |
| as the best standard of highness of organisation, 1861 1866 |
|
| → they perform in this state 1861 1866 1869 |
| in this state they perform 1872 |
|
| → ill-occupied 1861 1866 1869 |
| unoccupied or less well occupied 1872 |
|
|
which, like the sharks, approach nearest to
whilst other naturalists rank the common bony or teleostean fishes as the highest, inasmuch as they are most strictly fish-like, and differ most from the other vertebrate classes.
→Still
more plainly
the obscurity of the subject by turning to plants,
which the standard of intellect is of course quite excluded; and here some botanists rank those plants as highest which have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, fully developed in each flower; whereas other botanists, probably with more truth, look at the plants which have their several organs much modified and
reduced in number as
the
|
|
| If we
→take, as the standard of high organisation, the amount of
differentiation and specialisation of the several organs
each being when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for intellectual
→OMIT
natural selection clearly leads towards
for all physiologists admit that the specialisation of organs, inasmuch as
→they perform in this state
their functions better, is an advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations tending towards specialisation is within the scope of natural selection. On the other hand, we can see, bearing in mind that all organic beings are striving to increase at a high ratio and to seize on every
→ill-occupied
place in the economy of nature, that it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit
being to a situation in which several organs would be superfluous
useless: in such cases there
be retrogression in the scale of organisation. Whether organisation on the whole has actually advanced from the remotest geological periods to the present day will be more conveniently discussed in our chapter on Geological Succession.
|
