[{44}] There is an article on the vis medicatrix in Brougham’s Dissertations, 1839, a copy of which is in the author’s library.
[{45}] This is the classification of selection into methodical and unconscious given in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 33, vi. p. 38.
[{46}] This passage, and a similar discussion on the power of the Creator (p. 6), correspond to the comparison between the selective capacities of man and nature, in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 83, vi. p. 102.
[{47}] i.e. they are individually distinguishable.
[{48}] See Origin, Ed. i. p. 133, vi. p. 165.
[{49}] When the author wrote this sketch he seems not to have been so fully convinced of the general occurrence of variation in nature as he afterwards became. The above passage in the text possibly suggests that at this time he laid more stress on sports or mutations than was afterwards the case.
[{50}] The author may possibly have taken the case of the woodpecker from Buffon, Histoire Nat. des Oiseaux, T. vii. p. 3, 1780, where however it is treated from a different point of view. He uses it more than once, see for instance Origin, Ed. i. pp. 3, 60, 184, vi. pp. 3, 76, 220. The passage in the text corresponds with a discussion on the woodpecker and the mistletoe in Origin, Ed. i. p. 3, vi. p. 3.
[{51}] This illustration occurs in the Origin, Ed. i. pp. 90, 91, vi. pp. 110, 111.
[{52}] See Origin, Ed. i. p. 83, vi. p. 102, where the word Creator is replaced by Nature.
[{53}] Note in the original. “Good place to introduce, saying reasons hereafter to be given, how far I extend theory, say to all mammalia—reasons growing weaker and weaker.”