Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1Darwin, Charles
History
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
An analogous point of view is given in the discussion (1st edition
page 98; 2nd edition page 85) of the mistaken belief that large animals
require, for their support, a luxuriant vegetation; the incorrectness of
this view is illustrated by the comparison of the fauna of South
Africa and South America, and the vegetation of the two continents.
The interest of the discussion is that it shows clearly our a priori
ignorance of the conditions of life suitable to any organism.
There is a passage which has been more than once quoted as bearing
on the origin of his views. It is where he discusses the striking
difference between the species of mice on the east and west of the Andes
(1st edition page 399): "Unless we suppose the same species to have been
created in two different countries, we ought not to expect any closer
similarity between the organic beings on the opposite sides of the
Andes than on shores separated by a broad strait of the sea." In the
2nd edition page 327, the passage is almost verbally identical, and is
practically the same.
There are other passages again which are more strongly evolutionary in
the 2nd edition, but otherwise are similar to the corresponding passages
in the 1st edition. Thus, in describing the blind Tuco-tuco (1st edition
page 60; 2nd edition page 52), in the first edition he makes no allusion
to what Lamarck might have thought, nor is the instance used as an
example of modification, as in the edition of 1845.
A striking passage occurs in the 2nd edition (page 173) on the
relationship between the "extinct edentata and the living sloths,
ant-eaters, and armadillos."
"This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead
and the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the
appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from
it, than any other class of facts."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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