The Antiquity of Man

by Sir Charles Lyell

The theory of indefinite modification would also explain why rudimentary organs are so useful in classification, being the remnants preserved by inheritance of organs which the present species once used—as in the case of the rudiments of eyes in insects and reptiles inhabiting dark caverns, or of the wings of birds and beetles which have lost all power of flight. In such cases the affinities of species are often more readily discerned by reference to these imperfect structures than by others of much more physiological importance to the individuals themselves.

The same hypothesis would explain why there are no mammalia in islands far from continents, except bats, which can reach them by flying; and also why the birds, insects, plants, and other inhabitants of islands, even when specifically unlike, usually agree generically with those of the nearest continent, it being assumed that the original stock of such species came by migration from the nearest land.

Variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted for, as for example why there is generally an intimate connection between the living animals and plants of each great division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the Post-Tertiary or Tertiary formations of the same region; as, for example, in North America, where we not only find among the living mollusca peculiar forms foreign to Europe, such as Gnathodon and Fulgur (a subgenus of Fusus), but meet also with extinct species of those same genera in the Tertiary fauna of the same part of the world. In like manner, among the mammalia we find in Australia not only living kangaroos and wombats, but fossil individuals of extinct species of the same genera. So also there are recent and fossil sloths, armadilloes and other Edentata in South America, and living and extinct species of elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and bear in the great Europeo-Asiatic continent. The theory of the origin of new species by variation will also explain why a species which has once died out never reappears and why the fossil fauna and flora recede farther and farther from the living type in proportion as we trace them back to remoter ages. It would also account for the fact that when we have to intercalate a new set of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous.

One of the most original speculations in Mr. Darwin's work is derived from the fact that, in the breeding of animals, it is often observed that at whatever age any variation first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a corresponding age in the offspring. Hence the young individuals of two races which have sprung from the same parent stock are usually more like each other than the adults. Thus the puppies of the greyhound and bull-dog are much more nearly alike in their proportions than the grown-up dogs, and in like manner the foals of the carthorse and racehorse than the adult individuals. For the same reason we may understand why the species of the same genus, or genera of the same family, resemble each other more nearly in their embryonic than in their more fully developed state, or how it is that in the eyes of most naturalists the structure of the embryo is even more important in classification than that of the adult, "for the embryo is the animal in its less modified state, and in so far it reveals the structure of its progenitor. In two groups of animals, however much they may at present differ from each other in structure and habits, if they pass through the same or similar embryonic stages, we may feel assured that they have both descended from the same or nearly similar parents, and are therefore in that degree closely related. Thus community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent, however much the structure of the adult may have been modified."*

(* Darwin, "Origin" etc. page 448.)

If then there had been a system of progressive development, the successive changes through which the embryo of a species of a high class, a mammifer for example, now passes, may be expected to present us with a picture of the stages through which, in the course of ages, that class of animals has successively passed in advancing from a lower to a higher grade. Hence the embryonic states exhibited one after the other by the human individual bear a certain amount of resemblance to those of the fish, reptile, and bird before assuming those of the highest division of the vertebrata.

Mr. Darwin, after making a laborious analysis of many floras, found that those genera which are represented by a large number of species contain a greater number of variable species, relatively speaking, than the smaller genera or those less numerously represented. This fact he adduces in support of his opinion that varieties are incipient species, for he observes that the existence of the larger genera implies that the manufacturing of species has been active in the period immediately preceding our own, in which case we ought generally to find the same forces still in full activity, more especially as we have every reason to believe the process by which new species are produced is a slow one.*

(* "Origin of Species" chapter 2 page 56.)

Dr. Hooker tells us that he was long disposed to doubt this result, as he was acquainted with so many variable small genera, but after examining Mr. Darwin's data, he was compelled to acquiesce in his generalisation.*

(* "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia" page 6.)