Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1866

accordance with the views advanced by me, be accounted for by inheritance from a common progenitor. But as the vast majority of the species in the above two families, as well as the main body of crustaceans of all orders, are aquatic in their habits, it is improbable in the highest degree, that their common progenitor should have been adapted for breathing air. Müller was thus led carefully to examine and describe the apparatus in the few air-breathing species; and in each he found it to differ in several important points, as in the position of the orifices, in the manner in which they are opened and closed, and in some accessory details. ↑ Now, on the belief that species belonging to distinct families, already differing in some characters, and which whenever they varied would probably have varied in different manners, have been slowly adapted through natural selection to live more and more out of water and to breathe the air, it is quite intelligible, and might even have been con- fidently expected, that the structural contrivances thus acquired would in each case have materially differed, although serving for the same purpose. On the hypothesis of separate acts of creation the whole case must remain unintelligible, and we can only say, so it is. This line of argument seems to have had great weight in leading this distinguished naturalist fully to accept the views maintained by me in this volume. ↑

In the several cases just discussed, we have seen that in beings more or less remotely allied, the same end is gained and the same function performed by organs in appearance, though not in truth, closely similar. But

accordance with the views advanced by me, be accounted for by inheritance from a common progenitor. But as the vast majority of the species in the above two families, as well as most crustaceans of all orders, are aquatic in their habits, it is improbable in the highest degree, that their common progenitor should have been adapted for breathing air. Müller was thus led carefully to examine .. the apparatus in the .. air-breathing species; and in each he found it to differ in several important points, as in the position of the orifices, in the manner in which they are opened and closed, and in some accessory details. Now such differences are intelligible, and might even have been anticipated, on the supposition that species belonging to distinct families had slowly become adapted to live more and more out of water, and to breathe the air. For these species, from belonging to distinct families, would differ to a certain extent, and in accordance with the principle that the nature of each variation depends on two factors, viz. the nature of the organism and that of the conditions, the variability of these crustaceans assuredly would not have been exactly the same. Consequently natural selection would have had different materials or variations to work on, in order to arrive at the same functional result; and the structures thus acquired would almost necessarily have differed. ↑ On the hypothesis of separate acts of creation the whole case .. remains unintelligible. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. The above line of argument, as advanced by Fritz Müller, seems to have had great weight in leading this distinguished naturalist to accept the views maintained by me in this volume.