"Even those physiologists who contend for what is termed the indefinite
nature of species admit that they have limits at present and under
ordinary circumstances. Whatever diversities take place happen without
breaking in upon the characteristic type of the species. This is
transmitted from generation to generation: goats produce goats, and
sheep, sheep."
The passage on page 242 occurs in the reprint of the 1836-7 edition
which forms part of the 1841-51 edition, but is not there marked by Mr.
Darwin. He notes at the end of Volume I. of the 1836-7 edition: "March,
1857. I have not looked through all these [i.e. marked passages], but I
have gone through the later edition"; and a similar entry is in Volume
II. of the third edition. It is therefore easy to understand how he came
to overlook the passage on page 242 when he began the fuller statement
of his species theory which is referred to in the "Life and Letters" as
the "unfinished book." In the historical sketch prefixed to the "Origin
of Species" writers are named as precursors whose claims are less strong
than Prichard's, and it is certain that Mr. Darwin would have given an
account of him if he had thought of him as an evolutionist.
The two following passages will show that Mr. Darwin was, from his
knowledge of Prichard's books, justified in classing him among those who
did not believe in the mutability of species:
"The various tribes of organised beings were originally placed by
the Creator in certain regions, for which they are by their nature
peculiarly adapted. Each species had only one beginning in a single
stock: probably a single pair, as Linnaeus supposed, was first called
into being in some particular spot, and the progeny left to disperse
themselves to as great a distance from the original centre of their
existence as the locomotive powers bestowed on them, or their capability
of bearing changes of climate and other physical agencies, may have
enabled them to wander." (14/9. Prichard, third edition, 1836-7, Volume
I., page 96.)
The second passage is annotated by Mr. Darwin with a shower of
exclamation marks:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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