Darwinism stated by Darwin himself: Characteristic passages from the writings of Charles DarwinDarwin, Charles
Science
Darwinism stated by Darwin himself: Characteristic passages from the writings of Charles Darwin
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology)
What can be more wonderful than that characters, which have disappeared
during scores, or hundreds, or even thousands of generations, should
suddenly reappear perfectly developed, as in the case of pigeons and
fowls, both when purely bred and especially when crossed; or as with
the zebrine stripes on dun-colored horses, and other such cases? Many
monstrosities come under this same head, as when rudimentary organs
are redeveloped, or when an organ which we must believe was possessed
by an early progenitor of the species, but of which not even a
rudiment is left, suddenly reappears, as with the fifth stamen in some
_Scrophulariaceæ_.
* * * * *
[Page 369.]
In every living creature we may feel assured that a host of long-lost
characters lie ready to be evolved under proper conditions. How can
we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, this wonderful
and common capacity of reversion--this power of calling back to life
long-lost characters?
* * * * *
[Page 336.]
Imperfect nails sometimes appear on the stumps of the amputated
fingers of man; and it is an interesting fact that with the snake-like
saurians, which present a series with more and more imperfect limbs,
the terminations of the phalanges first disappear, “the nails becoming
transferred to their proximal remnants, or even to parts which are not
phalanges.”
* * * * *
[Page 387.]
Mr. Salter and Dr. Maxwell Masters have found pollen within the ovules
of the passion-flower and of the rose. Buds may be developed in the
most unnatural positions, as on the petal of a flower. Numerous
analogous facts could be given.
I do not know how physiologists look at such facts as the foregoing.
According to the doctrine of pangenesis, the gemmules of the transposed
organs become developed in the wrong place, from uniting with wrong
cells or aggregates of cells during their nascent state; and this would
follow from a slight modification in their elective affinities.
* * * * *
[Page 388.]
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