F373    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 1st ed., 1st issue.   Text   Image   PDF

complex laws in their degrees and kinds of resemblance to their parents,—in being absorbed into each other by successive crosses, and in other such points,—as do the crossed offspring of acknowledged varieties. On the other hand, these would be strange facts if species have been independently created, and varieties have been produced by secondary laws. If we admit that the geological record is imperfect in an extreme degree, then such facts as the record gives, support the theory of descent with

F373    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 1st ed., 1st issue.   Text   Image   PDF

as the presence of peculiar species of bats, and the absence of all other mammals, on oceanic islands, are utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation. The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two areas, implies, on the theory of descent with modification, that the same parents formerly inhabited both areas; and we almost invariably find that wherever many closely allied species inhabit two areas, some identical species common to both still exist

F373    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 1st ed., 1st issue.   Text   Image   PDF

embryo becomes at any period of life active and has to provide for itself;—of the embryo apparently having sometimes a higher organisation than the mature animal, into which it is developed. I believe that all these facts can be explained, as follows, on the view of descent with modification. It is commonly assumed, perhaps from monstrosities often affecting the embryo at a very early period, that slight variations necessarily appear at an equally early period. But we have little evidence on

A507    Review:     Anon. 1859. Charles Darwin on the origin of species. Chambers's Journal 11: 388-391.   Text   Image   PDF

sometimes a higher organisation than the mature animal into which it is developed.' He believes that all these things can be explained on the view of 'descent with modification.' 'On the principle of successive variations not always supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding not early period of life, we can clearly see why the embryos of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, should be so closely alike, and should be so unlike the adult forms.' 'Disuse,' he proceeds to say

A506    Review:     [Leifchild, John R.] 1859. [Review of] On the origin of species. Athenaeum no. 1673 (19 November): 659-660.   Text   Image   PDF

poetical in the conception of a succession of created beings, daily and hourly making the wisest election amidst all variations and divergencies; carefully rejecting what is bad, and preserving and accumulating all that is good; operating silently and insensibly, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, towards the improvement of every organized existence in relation to its organic and inorganic condition of life. There is, too, a certain simplicity in the theory of descent with modification

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

CHAPTER VI. DIFFICULTIES ON THEORY. Difficulties on the theory of descent with modification — Transitions — Absence or rarity of transitional varieties — Transitions in habits of life — Diversified habits in the same species — Species with habits widely different from those of their allies — Organs of extreme perfection — Means of transition — Cases of difficulty — Natura non facit saltum — Organs of small importance — Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect — The law of Unity of Type and

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

inferences briefly recapitulated. That many and serious objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

CHAPTER VI. DIFFICULTIES ON THEORY. Difficulties on the theory of descent with modification — Transitions — Absence or rarity of transitional varieties — Transitions in habits of life — Diversified habits in the same species — Species with habits widely different from those of their allies — Organs of extreme perfection — Means of transition — Cases of difficulty — Natura non facit saltum — Organs of small importance — Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect — The law of Unity of Type and

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

those groups, which have within known geological periods undergone much modification, should in the older formations make some slight approach to each other; so that the older members should differ less from each other in some of their characters than do the existing members of the same groups; and this by the concurrent evidence of our best palæontologists seems frequently to be the case. Thus, on the theory of descent with modification, the main facts with respect to the mutual affinities of

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

seem to me simply to follow on the theory of descent with modification through natural selection. We can thus understand how it is that new species come in slowly and successively; how species of different classes do not necessarily change together, or at the same rate, or in the same degree; yet in the long run that all undergo modification to some extent. The extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms. We can understand why when a species has

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

the recent period all existing islands have been nearly or quite joined to some continent. This view would remove many difficulties, but it would not, I think, explain all the facts in regard to insular productions. In the following remarks I shall not confine myself to the mere question of dispersal; but shall consider some other facts, which bear on the truth of the two theories of independent creation and of descent with modification. The species of all kinds which inhabit oceanic islands are

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded on descent with modification; that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical; that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

, imperfect nails sometimes appear on the stumps: I could as soon believe that these vestiges of nails have appeared, not from unknown laws of growth, but in order to excrete horny matter, as that the rudimentary nails on the fin of the manatee were formed for this purpose. On my view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions,—as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,—the vestige of an ear in

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

, families, orders, and classes. On this same view of descent with modification, all the great facts in Morphology become intelligible,—whether we look to the same pattern displayed in the homologous organs, to whatever purpose applied, of the different species of a class; or to the homologous parts constructed on the same pattern in each individual animal and plant. On the principle of successive slight variations, not necessarily or generally supervening at a very early period of life, and being

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

complex laws in their degrees and kinds of resemblance to their parents,—in being absorbed into each other by successive crosses, and in other such points,—as do the crossed offspring of acknowledged varieties. On the other hand, these would be strange facts if species have been independently created, and varieties have been produced by secondary laws. If we admit that the geological record is imperfect in an extreme degree, then such facts as the record gives, support the theory of descent with

F376    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 2d ed., second issue.   Text   Image   PDF

as the presence of peculiar species of bats, and the absence of all other mammals, on oceanic islands, are utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation. The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two areas, implies, on the theory of descent with modification, that the same parents formerly inhabited both areas; and we almost invariably find that wherever many closely allied species inhabit two areas, some identical species common to both still exist

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

been produced by descent with modification, than that they have been separately created: the author first promulgated this opinion in 1831. M. Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, in his Lectures delivered in 1850 (of which a R sum appeared in the Revue et Mag. de Zoolog., Jan. 1851), briefly gives his reasons for believing that specific characters sont fixes, pour chaque esp ce, tant qu'elle se perp tue au milieu des m mes circonstances, ils se modifient, si les circonstances ambiantes viennent

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

CHAPTER XIII. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MORPHOLOGY: EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. CLASSIFICATION, groups subordinate to groups Natural system Rules and difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent with modification Classification of varieties Descent always used in classification Analogical or adaptive characters Affinities, general, complex and radiating Extinction separates and defines groups MORPHOLOGY, between members of the same class, between parts of

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

briefly recapitulated. That many and grave objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor

A47    Review:     Dawson, J.W. 1860. [Review of] Darwin on the origin of species by means of natural selection. Canadian Naturalist and Geologist. 5: 100-120.   Text   Image   PDF

tend to fill up very wide intervals between existing orders. Organs in a rudimentary condition plainly show that an early progenitor had the organ in a fully developed state; and this in some instances necessarily implies an enormous amount of modification in the descendants. Throughout whole classes various structures are formed on the same pattern, and at an embryonic age the species closely resemble each other. Therefore I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

modification Summary of the last and present chapters, 334 CHAPTER XIII. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MORPHOLOGY: EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. CLASSIFICATION, groups subordinate to groups Natural system Rules and difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent with modification Classi [page]

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

see how far these several facts and inferences accord with the theory of descent with modification. As the subject is somewhat complex, I must request the reader to turn to the diagram in the fourth chapter. We may suppose that the numbered letters represent genera, and the dotted lines diverging from them the species in each genus. The diagram is much too simple, too few genera and too few species being given, but this is unimportant for us. The horizontal lines may represent successive

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

relation to the distribution of marine animals. On the theory of descent with modification, the great law of the long enduring, but not immutable, succession of the same types within the same areas, is at once explained; for the inhabitants of each quarter of the world will obviously tend to leave in that quarter, during the next succeeding period of time, closely allied though in some degree modified descendants. If the inhabitants of one continent formerly differed greatly from those of another

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

species, belonging to genera exclusively confined to the south, at these and other distant points of the southern hemisphere, is, on my theory of descent with modification, a far more remarkable case of difficulty. For some of these species are so distinct, that we cannot suppose that there has been time since the commencement of the Glacial period for their migration, and for their subsequent modification to the necessary degree. The facts seem to me to indicate that peculiar and very

F380    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented.   Text   Image   PDF

with modification; that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical; that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the enunciation of general propositions, and the mere putting together and separating objects more or less alike. But I must