Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological SelectionRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological Selection
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
The 1st and 3rd of these propositions will probably be disputed by
few, if by any. The proof of the 2nd is found wherever a set of
closely allied organisms is so distributed over a territory that
each species and variety occupies its own narrow district, within
which it is shut by barriers that restrain its distribution while
each species of the environing types is distributed over the whole
territory. The distribution of terrestrial molluscs on the Sandwich
Islands presents a great body of facts of this kind.
CHAPTER II.
ISOLATION (_continued_).
I will now recapitulate the main doctrines which have been set forth in
the foregoing chapter, and then proceed to consider the objections which
have been advanced against them.
It must be remembered that by isolation I mean exactly what Mr. Gulick
does by "Segregation," and approximately what Professor Weismann does by
"Amixia "--i. e. the prevention of intercrossing.
Isolation occurs in very many forms besides the geographical, as will be
more fully shown at the end of this chapter; and in all its forms it
admits of degrees.
It also occurs in two very different species or kinds--namely,
discriminate and indiscriminate. These I have called respectively
Homogamy and Apogamy. This all-important distinction has been clearly
recognized by Mr. Gulick, as a result of his own thought and
observation, independently of anything that I have published upon the
subject.
In view of this distinction Isolation takes rank with Heredity and
Variability as one of the most fundamental principles of organic
evolution. For, if these other two principles be granted, the whole
theory of descent resolves itself into an inquiry touching the causes,
forms, and degrees of Homogamy.
Save in cases where very large populations are concerned, apogamy must
sooner or later give rise _per se_ to homogamy, owing to the Law of
Delbœuf, which is the principle that I have called Independent
Variability, and Gulick has called Independent Generation. But of course
this does not hinder that under apogamy various other causes of homogamy
are likely to arise--in particular natural selection.
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