Origin of Species Variorum

whether there had been more or less modification, the principle of inheritance would keep the forms together which were allied in the greatest number of points. In tumbler pigeons, though some of the sub-varieties differ in the important character of having a longer beak, yet all are kept together from having the common habit of tumbling; but the short-faced breed has nearly or quite lost this habit; nevertheless, without any thought on the subject, these tumblers are kept in the same group, because allied in blood and alike in some other respects. ↑

With species in a state of nature, every naturalist has in fact brought descent into his classification; for he includes in his lowest grade, .. that of the species, the two sexes; and how enormously these sometimes differ in the most important characters, is known to every naturalist: scarcely a single fact can be predicated in common of the adult males and hermaphrodites of certain cirripedes, .. and yet no one dreams of separating them. As soon as the three Orchidean forms, Monachanthus, Myanthus, and Catasetum, which had previously been ranked as three distinct genera, were known to be sometimes produced on the same plant, they were immediately considered as varieties; and now I have been able to show that they are the male, female, and hermaphrodite forms of the same species. The naturalist includes as one species the various larval stages of the same individual, however much they may differ from each other and from the adult, as well as the so-called alternate generations of Steenstrup, which can only in a technical sense be considered as the same individual. He includes monsters and varieties, not from their partial resemblance to the parent-form, but because they are descended from it.

As descent has universally been used in classing