The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
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The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Natural selection
I mean by this expression that the whole organisation is so tied
together, during its growth and development, that when slight
variations in any one part occur and are accumulated through natural
selection, other parts become modified. This is a very important
subject, most imperfectly understood, and no doubt wholly different
classes of facts may be here easily confounded together. We shall
presently see that simple inheritance often gives the false appearance
of correlation. One of the most obvious real cases is, that variations
of structure arising in the young or larvæ naturally tend to affect the
structure of the mature animal. The several parts which are homologous,
and which, at an early embryonic period, are identical in structure,
and which are necessarily exposed to similar conditions, seem eminently
liable to vary in a like manner: we see this in the right and left
sides of the body varying in the same manner; in the front and hind
legs, and even in the jaws and limbs, varying together, for the lower
jaw is believed by some anatomists to be homologous with the limbs.
These tendencies, I do not doubt, may be mastered more or less
completely by natural selection: thus a family of stags once existed
with an antler only on one side; and if this had been of any great use
to the breed, it might probably have been rendered permanent by natural
selection.
Homologous parts, as has been remarked by some authors, tend to cohere;
this is often seen in monstrous plants: and nothing is more common than
the union of homologous parts in normal structures, as in the union of
the petals into a tube. Hard parts seem to affect the form of adjoining
soft parts; it is believed by some authors that with birds the
diversity in the shape of the pelvis causes the remarkable diversity in
the shape of the kidneys. Others believe that the shape of the pelvis
in the human mother influences by pressure the shape of the head of the
child. In snakes, according to Schlegel, the shape of the body and the
manner of swallowing determine the position and form of several of the
most important viscera.
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