On the Genesis of SpeciesMivart, St. George Jackson
Religion
On the Genesis of Species
Mivart, St. George Jackson
Evolution (Biology)
In such creatures we see that, from time to time, one of the segments of
the body gradually becomes modified till it assumes the condition of a
head, and this remarkable phenomenon is repeated again and again, the body
of the worm thus multiplying serially into new individuals which
successively detach themselves from the older portion. The development of
such a mode of reproduction by "Natural Selection" seems not less
inexplicable than does its continued performance through the aid of {212}
"pangenesis." For how can gemmules attach themselves to others to which
they do not normally or generally succeed? Scarcely less difficult to
understand is the process of the stomach-carrying-off mode of metamorphosis
before spoken of as existing in the Echinoderms. Next, as to certain patent
and notorious facts: On the hypothesis of pangenesis, no creature can
develop an organ unless it possesses the component gemmules which serve for
its formation. No creature can possess such gemmules unless it inherits
them from its parents, grandparents, or its less remote ancestors. Now, the
Jews are remarkably scrupulous as to marriage, and rarely contract such a
union with individuals not of their own race. This practice has gone on for
thousands of years, and similarly also for thousands of years the rite of
circumcision has been unfailingly and carefully performed. If then the
hypothesis of pangenesis is well founded, that rite ought to be now
absolutely or nearly superfluous from the necessarily continuous absence of
certain gemmules through so many centuries and so many generations. Yet it
is not at all so, and this fact seems to amount almost to an experimental
demonstration that the hypothesis of pangenesis is an insufficient
explanation of individual evolution.
Two exceedingly good criticisms of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis have appeared.
One of these is by Mr. G. H. Lewes,[221] the other by Professor Delpino of
Florence.[222] The latter gentleman gives a report of an observation made
by him upon a certain plant, which observation adds force to what has just
been said about the Jewish race. He says:[223] "If we examine and compare
the numerous species of the genus _Salvia_, commencing with _Salvia
officinalis_, which may pass as the main state of the genus, and {213}
concluding with _Salvia verticillata_, which may be taken as the most
highly developed form, and as the most distant from the type, we observe a
singular phenomenon. The lower cell of each of the two fertile anthers,
which is much reduced and different from the superior even in _Salvia
officinalis_, is transmuted in other _salviae_ into an organ (nectarotheca)
having a very different form and function, and finally disappears entirely
in _Salvia verticillata_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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