[359]

Lubbock. Linn. Trans. 1860 or 1861 p. 166

"Every species is a link between other allied forms"

22

[John Lubbock. 1860. On some oceanic entomostraca collected by Captain Toynbee. (Read 7 June 1860). Transactions of the Linnean Society, vol. 23: 173-192.]

 

[Origin, pp. 323-324: "It has been asserted over and over again, by writers who believe in the immutability of species, that geology has yielded no linking forms. This assertion is entirely erroneous. As Mr. Lubbock has recently remarked, "Every species is a link between other allied forms." We clearly see this if we take a genus having a score of recent and extinct species and destroy four-fifths of them; for in this case no one will doubt that the remainder will stand much more distinct from each other. If the extreme forms in the genus happen to have been thus destroyed, the genus itself in most cases will stand more distinct from other allied genera. The camel and the pig, or the horse and the tapir, are now obviously very distinct forms; but if we add the several fossil quadrupeds which have already been discovered to the families including the camel and pig, these forms become joined by links not extremely wide apart. The chain of linking forms does not, however, in these cases, or in any case, run straight from the one living form to the other, but takes a circuitous sweep through the forms which lived during long past ages. What geological research has not revealed is the former existence of infinitely numerous gradations, as fine as existing varieties, connecting all known species. And this not having been effected by geology is the most obvious of the many objections which may be urged against my views."]