Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1860

ages of each species. But it is by no means obvious, on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryonic characters are the most important of any in the classification of animals; and this doctrine has very generally been admitted as true. ↑ The same fact holds good with flowering plants, of which the two main divisions have been founded on characters derived from the embryo,— on the number and position of the em- bryonic leaves or cotyledons, and on the mode of development of the plumule and radicle. ↑ In our discussion on embryology, we shall see why such characters are so valuable, on the view of classification tacitly including the idea of descent.

Our classifications are often plainly influenced by chains of affinities. Nothing can be easier than to define a number of characters common to all birds; but in the case of crustaceans, such definition has hitherto been found impossible. There are crustaceans at the opposite ends of the series, which have hardly a character in common; yet the species at both ends, from being plainly allied to others, and these to others, and so onwards, can be recognised as unequivocally belonging to this, and to no other class of the Articulata.

Geographical distribution has often been used, though perhaps not quite logically, in classification, more especially in very large groups of closely allied forms.

ages. .. .. .. But it is by no means obvious, on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryological characters are the most important of all; and this doctrine has very generally been admitted as true. ↑ Nevertheless their importance has sometimes been exaggerated; in order to show this, Fritz Müller arranged by the aid of such characters the great class of crustaceans, and the arrangement did not prove a natural one. But there can be no doubt that characters derived from the embryo are generally of the highest value, not only with animals but with plants. Thus the two main divisions of flowering plants are founded on differences in the embryo,— on the number and position of the cotyledons, and on the mode of development of the plumule and radicle. We shall immediately see why these characters possess so high a value in classification, namely, from the natural system being genealogical in its arrangement.

Geographical distribution has often been used, though perhaps not quite logically, in classification, more especially in very large groups of closely allied forms.