The Foundations of the Origin of Species Part 19

{446} A general statement of the influence of conditions on variation occurs in the _Origin_, Ed. i. pp. 131-3, vi. pp. 164-5.

Notwithstanding these great sources of difficulty, I apprehend every one would admit, that if it were possible, a genealogical cla.s.sification of our domestic varieties would be the most satisfactory one; and as far as varieties were concerned would be the natural system: in some cases it has been followed. In attempting to follow out this object a person would have to cla.s.s a variety, whose parentage he did not know, by its external characters; but he would have a distinct ulterior object in view, namely, its descent in the same manner as a regular systematist seems also to have an ulterior but undefined end in all his cla.s.sifications. Like the regular systematist he would not care whether his characters were drawn from more or less important organs as long as he found in the tribe which he was examining that the characters from such parts were persistent; thus amongst cattle he does value a character drawn from the form of the horns more than from the proportions of the limbs and whole body, for he finds that the shape of the horns is to a considerable degree persistent amongst cattle{447}, whilst the bones of the limbs and body vary. No doubt as a frequent rule the more important the organ, as being less related to external influences, the less liable it is to variation; but he would expect that according to the object for which the races had been selected, parts more or less important might differ; so that characters drawn from parts generally most liable to vary, as colour, might in some instances be highly serviceable--as is the case. He would admit that general resemblances scarcely definable by language might sometimes serve to allocate a species by its nearest relation. He would be able to a.s.sign a clear reason why the close similarity of the fruit in two varieties of pine-apple, and of the so-called root in the common and Swedish turnips, and why the similar gracefulness of form in the greyhound and racehorse, are characters of little value in cla.s.sification; namely, because they are the result, not of community of descent, but either of selection for a common end, or of the effects of similar external conditions.

{447} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 423, vi. p. 579. In the margin Marshall is given as the authority.

_Cla.s.sification of "races" and species similar._

Thus seeing that both the cla.s.sifiers of species and of varieties{448} work by the same means, make similar distinctions in the value of the characters, and meet with similar difficulties, and that both seem to have in their cla.s.sification an ulterior object in view; I cannot avoid strongly suspecting that the same cause, which has made amongst our domestic varieties groups and sub-groups, has made similar groups (but of higher values) amongst species; and that this cause is the greater or less propinquity of actual descent. The simple fact of species, both those long since extinct and those now living, being divisible into genera, families, orders &c.--divisions a.n.a.logous to those into which varieties are divisible--is otherwise an inexplicable fact, and only not remarkable from its familiarity.

{448} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 423, vi. p. 579.

_Origin of genera and families._

Let us suppose{449} for example that a species spreads and arrives at six or more different regions, or being already diffused over one wide area, let this area be divided into six distinct regions, exposed to different conditions, and with stations slightly different, not fully occupied with other species, so that six different races or species were formed by selection, each best fitted to its new habits and station. I must remark that in every case, if a species becomes modified in any one sub-region, it is probable that it will become modified in some other of the sub-regions over which it is diffused, for its organization is shown to be capable of being rendered plastic; its diffusion proves that it is able to struggle with the other inhabitants of the several sub-regions; and as the organic beings of every great region are in some degree allied, and as even the physical conditions are often in some respects alike, we might expect that a modification in structure, which gave our species some advantage over antagonist species in one sub-region, would be followed by other modifications in other of the sub-regions. The races or new species supposed to be formed would be closely related to each other; and would either form a new genus or sub-genus, or would rank (probably forming a slightly different section) in the genus to which the parent species belonged. In the course of ages, and during the contingent physical changes, it is probable that some of the six new species would be destroyed; but the same advantage, whatever it may have been (whether mere tendency to vary, or some peculiarity of organization, power of mind, or means of distribution), which in the parent-species and in its six selected and changed species-offspring, caused them to prevail over other antagonist species, would generally tend to preserve some or many of them for a long period.

If then, two or three of the six species were preserved, they in their turn would, during continued changes, give rise to as many small groups of species: if the parents of these small groups were closely similar, the new species would form one great genus, barely perhaps divisible into two or three sections: but if the parents were considerably unlike, their species-offspring would, from inheriting most of the peculiarities of their parent-stocks, form either two or more sub-genera or (if the course of selection tended in different ways) genera. And lastly species descending from different species of the newly formed genera would form new genera, and such genera collectively would form a family.

{449} The discussion here following corresponds more or less to the _Origin_, Ed. i. pp. 411, 412, vi. pp. 566, 567; although the doctrine of divergence is not mentioned in this Essay (as it is in the _Origin_) yet the present section seems to me a distinct approximation to it.

The extermination of species follows from changes in the external conditions, and from the increase or immigration of more favoured species: and as those species which are undergoing modification in any one great region (or indeed over the world) will very often be allied ones from (as just explained) partaking of many characters, and therefore advantages in common, so the species, whose place the new or more favoured ones are seizing, from partaking of a common inferiority (whether in any particular point of structure, or of general powers of mind, of means of distribution, of capacity for variation, &c., &c.), will be apt to be allied. Consequently species of the same genus will slowly, one after the other, _tend_ to become rarer and rarer in numbers, and finally extinct; and as each last species of several allied genera fails, even the family will become extinct. There may of course be occasional exceptions to the entire destruction of any genus or family. From what has gone before, we have seen that the slow and successive formation of several new species from the same stock will make a new genus, and the slow and successive formation of several other new species from another stock will make another genus; and if these two stocks were allied, such genera will make a new family. Now, as far as our knowledge serves, it is in this slow and gradual manner that groups of species appear on, and disappear from, the face of the earth.

The manner in which, according to our theory, the arrangement of species in groups is due to partial extinction, will perhaps be rendered clearer in the following way. Let us suppose in any one great cla.s.s, for instance in the Mammalia, that every species and every variety, during each successive age, had sent down one unaltered descendant (either fossil or living) to the present time; we should then have had one enormous series, including by small gradations every known mammiferous form; and consequently the existence of groups{450}, or chasms in the series, which in some parts are in greater width, and in some of less, is solely due to former species, and whole groups of species, not having thus sent down descendants to the present time.

{450} The author probably intended to write "groups separated by chasms."

With respect to the "a.n.a.logical" or "adaptive" resemblances between organic beings which are not really related{451}, I will only add, that probably the isolation of different groups of species is an important element in the production of such characters: thus we can easily see, in a large increasing island, or even a continent like Australia, stocked with only certain orders of the main cla.s.ses, that the conditions would be highly favourable for species from these orders to become adapted to play parts in the economy of nature, which in other countries were performed by tribes especially adapted to such parts. We can understand how it might happen that an otter-like animal might have been formed in Australia by slow selection from the more carnivorous Marsupial types; thus we can understand that curious case in the southern hemisphere, where there are no auks (but many petrels), of a petrel{452} having been modified into the external general form so as to play the same office in nature with the auks of the northern hemisphere; although the habits and form of the petrels and auks are normally so wholly different. It follows, from our theory, that two orders must have descended from one common stock at an immensely remote epoch; and we can perceive when a species in either order, or in both, shows some affinity to the other order, why the affinity is usually generic and not particular--that is why the Bizcacha amongst Rodents, in the points in which it is related to the Marsupial, is related to the whole group{453}, and not particularly to the Phascolomys, which of all Marsupialia is related most to the Rodents. For the Bizcacha is related to the present Marsupialia, only from being related to their common parent-stock; and not to any one species in particular. And generally, it may be observed in the writings of most naturalists, that when an organism is described as intermediate between two _great_ groups, its relations are not to particular species of either group, but to both groups, as wholes. A little reflection will show how exceptions (as that of the Lepidosiren, a fish closely related to _particular_ reptiles) might occur, namely from a few descendants of those species, which at a very early period branched out from a common parent-stock and so formed the two orders or groups, having survived, in nearly their original state, to the present time.

{451} A similar discussion occurs in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 427, vi. p. 582.

{452} _Puffinuria berardi_, see _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 184, vi. p.

221.

{453} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 430, vi. p. 591.

Finally, then, we see that all the leading facts in the affinities and cla.s.sification of organic beings can be explained on the theory of the natural system being simply a genealogical one. The similarity of the principles in cla.s.sifying domestic varieties and true species, both those living and extinct, is at once explained; the rules followed and difficulties met with being the same. The existence of genera, families, orders, &c., and their mutual relations, naturally ensues from extinction going on at all periods amongst the diverging descendants of a common stock. These terms of affinity, relations, families, adaptive characters, &c., which naturalists cannot avoid using, though metaphorically, cease being so, and are full of plain signification.

CHAPTER VIII

UNITY OF TYPE IN THE GREAT CLa.s.sES; AND MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURES

_Unity of Type_{454}.

{454} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 434, vi. p. 595. Ch. VIII corresponds to a section of Ch. XIII in the _Origin_, Ed. i.

Scarcely anything is more wonderful or has been oftener insisted on than that the organic beings in each great cla.s.s, though living in the most distant climes and at periods immensely remote, though fitted to widely different ends in the economy of nature, yet all in their internal structure evince an obvious uniformity. What, for instance, is more wonderful than that the hand to clasp, the foot or hoof to walk, the bat's wing to fly, the porpoise's fin{455} to swim, should all be built on the same plan? and that the bones in their position and number should be so similar that they can all be cla.s.sed and called by the same names.

Occasionally some of the bones are merely represented by an apparently useless, smooth style, or are soldered closely to other bones, but the unity of type is not by this destroyed, and hardly rendered less clear.

We see in this fact some deep bond of union between the organic beings of the same great cla.s.ses--to ill.u.s.trate which is the object and foundation of the natural system. The perception of this bond, I may add, is the evident cause that naturalists make an ill-defined distinction between true and adaptive affinities.

{455} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 434, vi. p. 596. In the _Origin_, Ed. i.

these examples occur under the heading _Morphology_; the author does not there draw much distinction between this heading and that of _Unity of Type_.

_Morphology._

There is another allied or rather almost identical cla.s.s of facts admitted by the least visionary naturalists and included under the name of Morphology. These facts show that in an individual organic being, several of its organs consist of some other organ metamorphosed{456}: thus the sepals, petals, stamens, pistils, &c. of every plant can be shown to be metamorphosed leaves; and thus not only can the number, position and transitional states of these several organs, but likewise their monstrous changes, be most lucidly explained. It is believed that the same laws hold good with the gemmiferous vesicles of Zoophytes. In the same manner the number and position of the extraordinarily complicated jaws and palpi of Crustacea and of insects, and likewise their differences in the different groups, all become simple, on the view of these parts, or rather legs and all metamorphosed appendages, being metamorphosed legs. The skulls, again, of the Vertebrata are composed of three metamorphosed vertebrae, and thus we can see a meaning in the number and strange complication of the bony case of the brain. In this latter instance, and in that of the jaws of the Crustacea, it is only necessary to see a series taken from the different groups of each cla.s.s to admit the truth of these views. It is evident that when in each species of a group its organs consist of some other part metamorphosed, that there must also be a "unity of type" in such a group. And in the cases as that above given in which the foot, hand, wing and paddle are said to be constructed on a uniform type, if we could perceive in such parts or organs traces of an apparent change from some other use or function, we should strictly include such parts or organs in the department of morphology: thus if we could trace in the limbs of the Vertebrata, as we can in their ribs, traces of an apparent change from being processes of the vertebrae, it would be said that in each species of the Vertebrata the limbs were "metamorphosed spinal processes," and that in all the species throughout the cla.s.s the limbs displayed a "unity of type{457}."

{456} See _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 436, vi. p. 599, where the parts of the flower, the jaws and palpi of Crustaceans and the vertebrate skull are given as examples.

{457} The author here brings _Unity of Type_ and _Morphology_ together.

These wonderful parts of the hoof, foot, hand, wing, paddle, both in living and extinct animals, being all constructed on the same framework, and again of the petals, stamina, germens, &c. being metamorphosed leaves, can by the creationist be viewed only as ultimate facts and incapable of explanation; whilst on our theory of descent these facts all necessary follow: for by this theory all the beings of any one cla.s.s, say of the mammalia, are supposed to be descended from one parent-stock, and to have been altered by such slight steps as man effects by the selection of chance domestic variations. Now we can see according to this view that a foot might be selected with longer and longer bones, and wider connecting membranes, till it became a swimming organ, and so on till it became an organ by which to flap along the surface or to glide over it, and lastly to fly through the air: but in such changes there would be no tendency to alter the framework of the internal inherited structure. Parts might become lost (as the tail in dogs, or horns in cattle, or the pistils in plants), others might become united together (as in the feet of the Lincolns.h.i.+re breed of pigs{458}, and in the stamens of many garden flowers); parts of a similar nature might become increased in number (as the vertebrae in the tails of pigs, &c., &c. and the fingers and toes in six-fingered races of men and in the Dorking fowls), but a.n.a.logous differences are observed in nature and are not considered by naturalists to destroy the uniformity of the types. We can, however, conceive such changes to be carried to such length that the unity of type might be obscured and finally be undistinguishable, and the paddle of the Plesiosaurus has been advanced as an instance in which the uniformity of type can hardly be recognised{459}. If after long and gradual changes in the structure of the co-descendants from any parent stock, evidence (either from monstrosities or from a graduated series) could be still detected of the function, which certain parts or organs played in the parent stock, these parts or organs might be strictly determined by their former function with the term "metamorphosed" appended. Naturalists have used this term in the same metaphorical manner as they have been obliged to use the terms of affinity and relation; and when they affirm, for instance, that the jaws of a crab are metamorphosed legs, so that one crab has more legs and fewer jaws than another, they are far from meaning that the jaws, either during the life of the individual crab or of its progenitors, were really legs. By our theory this term a.s.sumes its literal meaning{460}; and this wonderful fact of the complex jaws of an animal retaining numerous characters, which they would probably have retained if they had really been metamorphosed during many successive generations from true legs, is simply explained.

{458} The solid-hoofed pigs mentioned in _Var. under Dom._, Ed. ii.

vol. II. p. 424 are not _Lincolns.h.i.+re pigs_. For other cases see Bateson, _Materials for the Study of Variation_, 1894, pp. 387-90.

{459} In the margin C. Bell is given as authority, apparently for the statement about Plesiosaurus. See _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 436, vi.

p. 598, where the author speaks of the "general pattern" being obscured in "extinct gigantic sea lizards." In the same place the suctorial Entomostraca are added as examples of the difficulty of recognising the type.

{460} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 438, vi. p. 602.

_Embryology_.

The unity of type in the great cla.s.ses is shown in another and very striking manner, namely, in the stages through which the embryo pa.s.ses in coming to maturity{461}. Thus, for instance, at one period of the embryo, the wings of the bat, the hand, hoof or foot of the quadruped, and the fin of the porpoise do not differ, but consist of a simple undivided bone. At a still earlier period the embryo of the fish, bird, reptile and mammal all strikingly resemble each other. Let it not be supposed this resemblance is only external; for on dissection, the arteries are found to branch out and run in a peculiar course, wholly unlike that in the full-grown mammal and bird, but much less unlike that in the full-grown fish, for they run as if to aerate blood by branchiae{462} on the neck, of which even the slit-like orifices can be discerned. How wonderful it is that this structure should be present in the embryos of animals about to be developed into such different forms, and of which two great cla.s.ses respire only in the air. Moreover, as the embryo of the mammal is matured in the parent's body, and that of the bird in an egg in the air, and that of the fish in an egg in the water, we cannot believe that this course of the arteries is related to any external conditions. In all sh.e.l.l-fish (Gasteropods) the embryo pa.s.ses through a state a.n.a.logous to that of the Pteropodous Mollusca: amongst insects again, even the most different ones, as the moth, fly and beetle, the crawling larvae are all closely a.n.a.logous: amongst the Radiata, the jelly-fish in its embryonic state resembles a polype, and in a still earlier state an infusorial animalcule--as does likewise the embryo of the polype. From the part of the embryo of a mammal, at one period, resembling a fish more than its parent form; from the larvae of all orders of insects more resembling the simpler articulate animals than their parent insects{463}; and from such other cases as the embryo of the jelly-fish resembling a polype much nearer than the perfect jelly-fish; it has often been a.s.serted that the higher animal in each cla.s.s pa.s.ses through the state of a lower animal; for instance, that the mammal amongst the vertebrata pa.s.ses through the state of a fish{464}: but Muller denies this, and affirms that the young mammal is at no time a fish, as does Owen a.s.sert that the embryonic jelly-fish is at no time a polype, but that mammal and fish, jelly-fish and polype pa.s.s through the same state; the mammal and jelly-fish being only further developed or changed.

{461} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 439, vi. p. 604.

{462} The uselessness of the branchial arches in mammalia is insisted on in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 440, vi. p. 606. Also the uselessness of the spots on the young blackbird and the stripes of the lion-whelp, cases which do not occur in the present Essay.

{463} In the _Origin_, Ed. i. pp. 442, 448, vi. pp. 608, 614 it is pointed out that in some cases the young form resembles the adult, _e.g._ in spiders; again, that in the Aphis there is no "worm-like stage" of development.

{464} In the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 449, vi. p. 618, the author speaks doubtfully about the recapitulation theory.

As the embryo, in most cases, possesses a less complicated structure than that into which it is to be developed, it might have been thought that the resemblance of the embryo to less complicated forms in the same great cla.s.s, was in some manner a necessary preparation for its higher development; but in fact the embryo, during its growth, may become less, as well as more, complicated{465}. Thus certain female Epizoic Crustaceans in their mature state have neither eyes nor any organs of locomotion; they consist of a mere sack, with a simple apparatus for digestion and procreation; and when once attached to the body of the fish, on which they prey, they never move again during their whole lives: in their embryonic condition, on the other hand, they are furnished with eyes, and with well articulated limbs, actively swim about and seek their proper object to become attached to. The larvae, also, of some moths are as complicated and are more active than the wingless and limbless females, which never leave their pupa-case, never feed and never see the daylight.

{465} This corresponds to the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 441, vi. p. 607, where, however, the example is taken from the Cirripedes.

_Attempt to explain the facts of embryology._

I think considerable light can be thrown by the theory of descent on these wonderful embryological facts which are common in a greater or less degree to the whole animal kingdom, and in some manner to the vegetable kingdom: on the fact, for instance, of the arteries in the embryonic mammal, bird, reptile and fish, running and branching in the same courses and nearly in the same manner with the arteries in the full-grown fish; on the fact I may add of the high importance to systematic naturalists{466} of the characters and resemblances in the embryonic state, in ascertaining the true position in the natural system of mature organic beings. The following are the considerations which throw light on these curious points.

{466} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 449, vi. p. 617.