The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
History
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
The difficulty in distinguishing variable species is largely due to the
varieties mocking, as it were, other species of the same genus. A
considerable catalogue, also, could be given of forms intermediate
between two other forms, which themselves can only doubtfully be ranked
as species; and this shows, unless all these closely allied forms be
considered as independently created species, that they have in varying
assumed some of the characters of the others. But the best evidence of
analogous variations is afforded by parts or organs which are generally
constant in character, but which occasionally vary so as to resemble,
in some degree, the same part or organ in an allied species. I have
collected a long list of such cases; but here, as before, I lie under
the great disadvantage of not being able to give them. I can only
repeat that such cases certainly occur, and seem to me very remarkable.
I will, however, give one curious and complex case, not indeed as
affecting any important character, but from occurring in several
species of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under
nature. It is a case almost certainly of reversion. The ass sometimes
has very distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs
of a zebra. It has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal,
and from inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. The
stripe on the shoulder is sometimes double, and is very variable in
length and outline. A white ass, but _not_ an albino, has been
described without either spinal or shoulder stripe; and these stripes
are sometimes very obscure, or actually quite lost, in dark-coloured
asses. The koulan of Pallas is said to have been seen with a double
shoulder-stripe. Mr. Blyth has seen a specimen of the hemionus with a
distinct shoulder-stripe, though it properly has none; and I have been
informed by Colonel Poole that foals of this species are generally
striped on the legs and faintly on the shoulder. The quagga, though so
plainly barred like a zebra over the body, is without bars on the legs;
but Dr. Gray has figured one specimen with very distinct zebra-like
bars on the hocks.
With respect to the horse, I have collected cases in England of the
spinal stripe in horses of the most distinct breeds, and of _all_
colours; transverse bars on the legs are not rare in duns, mouse-duns,
and in one instance in a chestnut; a faint shoulder-stripe may
sometimes be seen in duns, and I have seen a trace in a bay horse. My
son made a careful examination and sketch for me of a dun Belgian
cart-horse with a double stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes.
I have myself seen a dun Devonshire pony, and a small dun Welsh pony
has been carefully described to me, both with _three_ parallel stripes
on each shoulder.
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