Evolution, Old & New: Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,; as compared with that of Charles DarwinButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Evolution, Old & New: Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,; as compared with that of Charles Darwin
Butler, Samuel
Evolution (Biology) -- History
"Light cannot penetrate everywhere, and as a consequence, animals which
live habitually in places which it cannot reach, do not have an
opportunity of using eyes, even though they have got them; but animals
which form part of a system of organization which comprises eyes as an
invariable rule among its organs, must have had eyes originally. Since
then we find among these animals some which have lost their eyes, and
which have only concealed traces of these organs, it is evident that the
impoverishment, and even disappearance of the organs in question, must
be the effect of long-continued disuse.
"A proof of this is to be found in the fact that the organ of hearing is
never in like case with that of sight; we always find it in animals of
whose system of organization hearing is a component part; and for the
following reason, namely, that sound, which is the effect of vibration
upon the ear, can penetrate everywhere, and pass even through massive
intermediate bodies. Any animal, therefore, with an organic system of
which the ear is an essential part, can always find a use for its ears,
no matter where it inhabits. We never, therefore, come upon rudimentary
ears among the vertebrata, and when, going down the scale of life lower
than the vertebrata, we come to a point at which the ear is no longer to
be found; we never come upon ears again in any lower class.
"Not so with the organ of sight: we see this organ disappear, reappear,
and disappear again with the possibility or impossibility of using eyes
on the part of the creature itself.[374]
"The great development of mantle in the acephalous molluscs has rendered
eyes, and even a head, entirely useless to them. These organs, though
belonging to the type of the organism, and by rights included in it,
have had to disappear and become annihilated owing to continued default
of use.
. . . . . .
"Many insects which, by the analogy of their order and even genus,
should have wings, have nevertheless lost them more or less completely
through disuse. A number of coleoptera, orthoptera, hymenoptera, and
hemiptera give us examples, the habits of these animals never leading
them to use their wings."[375]
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