In the second place, while showing us how there have arisen countless
modifications in the forms, structures, and colours of each part, Mr.
Darwin has shown us how, by the establishment of favourable variations,
there may arise new parts. Though the first step in the production of
horns on the heads of various herbivorous animals, may have been the
growth of callosities consequent on the habit of butting—such
callosities thus functionally initiated being afterwards developed in
the most advantageous ways by selection; yet no explanation can be thus
given of the sudden appearance of a duplicate set of horns, as
occasionally happens in sheep: an addition which, where it proved
beneficial, might readily be made a permanent trait by natural
selection. Again, the modifications which follow use and disuse can by
no possibility account for changes in the numbers of vertebræ; but after
recognizing spontaneous, or rather fortuitous, variation as a factor, we
can see that where an additional vertebra hence resulting (as in some
pigeons) proves beneficial, survival of the fittest may make it a
constant character; and there may, by further like additions, be
produced extremely long strings of vertebræ, such as snakes show us.
Similarly with the mammary glands. It is not an unreasonable supposition
that by the effects of greater or less function, inherited through
successive generations, these may be enlarged or diminished in size; but
it is out of the question to allege such a cause for changes in their
numbers. There is no imaginable explanation of these save the
establishment by inheritance of spontaneous variations, such as are
known to occur in the human race.
So too, in the third place, with certain alterations in the connections
of parts. According to the greater or smaller demands made on this or
that limb, the muscles moving it may be augmented or diminished in bulk;
and, if there is inheritance of changes so wrought, the limb may, in
course of generations, be rendered larger or smaller. But changes in the
arrangements or attachments of muscles cannot be thus accounted for. It
is found, especially at the extremities, that the relations of tendons
to bones and to one another are not always the same. Variations in their
modes of connection may occasionally prove advantageous, and may thus
become established. Here again, then, we have a class of structural
changes to which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis gives us the key, and to which
there is no other key.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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