On the Genesis of Species Part 7

still exists unrefuted.

Mr. Darwin freely admits difficulties regarding the sterility of different species when crossed, and shows satisfactorily that it could never have arisen from the action of "Natural Selection." He remarks[120] also: "With some few exceptions, in the case of plants, domesticated varieties, such as those of the dog, fowl, pigeon, several fruit trees, and culinary vegetables, which differ from each other in external characters more than many species, are perfectly fertile when crossed, or even fertile in {124} excess, whilst closely allied species are almost invariably in some degree sterile."

Again, after speaking of "the general law of good being, derived from the intercrossing of distinct individuals of the same species," and the evidence that the pollen of a distinct _variety_ or race is prepotent over a flower's own pollen, adds the very significant remark,[121] "When distinct _species_ are crossed, the case is directly the reverse, for a plant's own pollen is almost always prepotent over foreign pollen."

Again he adds:[122] "I believe from observations communicated to me by Mr.

Hewitt, who has had great experience in hybridizing pheasants and fowls, that the early death of the embryo is a very frequent cause of sterility in first crosses. Mr. Salter has recently given the results of an examination of about 500 eggs produced from various crosses between three species of Gallus and their hybrids. The majority of these eggs had been fertilized, and in the majority of the fertilized eggs the embryos either had been partially developed and had then aborted, or had become nearly mature, but the young chickens had been unable to break through the sh.e.l.l. Of the chickens which were born, more than four-fifths died within the first few days, or at latest weeks, 'without any obvious cause, apparently from mere inability to live,' so that from 500 eggs only twelve chickens were reared.

The early death of hybrid embryos probably occurs in like manner with plants, at least it is known that hybrids raised from very distinct species are sometimes weak and dwarfed, and perish at an early age, of which fact Max Wichura has recently given some striking cases with hybrid willows."

Mr. Darwin objects to the notion that there is any special sterility imposed to check specific intermixture and change, saying,[123] "To grant to species the special power of producing hybrids, and then to stop {125} their further propagation by different degrees of sterility, not strictly related to the facility of the first union between their parents, seems a strange arrangement."

But this only amounts to saying that the author himself would not have so acted had he been the Creator. A "strange arrangement" must be admitted anyhow, and all who acknowledge teleology at all, must admit that the strange arrangement was designed. Mr. Darwin says, as to the sterility of species, that the cause lies exclusively in their s.e.xual const.i.tution; but all that need be affirmed is that sterility is brought about somehow, and it is undeniable that "crossing" _is_ checked. All that is contended for is that there _is_ a bar to the intermixture of _species_, but not of _breeds_; and if the conditions of the generative products are that bar, it is enough for the argument, no special kind of barring action being contended for.

He, however, attempts to account for the modification of the s.e.xual products of species as compared with those of varieties, by the exposure of the former to more uniform conditions during longer periods of time than those to which varieties are exposed, and that as wild animals, when captured, are often rendered sterile by captivity, so the influence of union with another species may produce a similar effect. It seems to the author an unwarrantable a.s.sumption that a cross with what, on the Darwinian theory, can only be a slightly diverging descendant of a common parent, should produce an effect equal to that of captivity, and consequent change of habit, as well as considerable modification of food.

No clear case has been given by Mr. Darwin in which mongrel animals, descended from the same undoubted species, have been persistently infertile _inter se_; nor any clear case in which hybrids between animals, generally admitted to be distinct species, have been continuously fertile _inter se_.

It is true that facts are brought forward tending to establish the probability of the doctrine of Pallas, that species may sometimes be {126} rendered fertile by domestication. But even if this were true, it would be no approximation towards proving the converse, _i.e._ that races and varieties may become sterile when wild. And whatever may be the preference occasionally shown by certain breeds to mate with their own variety, no sterility is recorded as resulting from unions with other varieties.

Indeed, Mr. Darwin remarks,[124] "With respect to sterility from the crossing of domestic races, I know of no well-ascertained case with animals. This fact (seeing the great difference in structure between some breeds of pigeons, fowls, pigs, dogs, &c.) is extraordinary when contrasted with the sterility, of many closely-allied natural species when crossed."

It has been alleged that the domestic and wild guinea-pig do not breed together, but the specific ident.i.ty of these forms is very problematical.

Mr. A. D. Bartlett, superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, whose experience is so great, and observation so quick, believes them to be decidedly distinct species.

Thus, then, it seems that a certain normal specific stability in species, accompanied by occasional sudden and considerable modifications, might be expected _a priori_ from what we know of crystalline inorganic forms and from what we may antic.i.p.ate with regard to the lowest organic ones. This presumption is strengthened by the knowledge of the increasing difficulties which beset any attempt to indefinitely intensify any race characteristics.

The obstacles to this indefinite intensification, as well as to certain lines of variation in certain cases, appear to be not only external, but to depend on internal causes or an internal cause. We have seen that Mr.

Darwin himself implicitly admits the principle of specific stability in a.s.serting the singular inflexibility of the organization of the goose. We have also seen that it is not fair to conclude that all wild races can vary as much as the most variable domestic ones. It has also been shown {127} that there are grounds for believing in a tendency to reversion generally, as it is distinctly present in certain instances. Also that specific stability is confirmed by the physiological obstacles which oppose themselves to any considerable or continued intermixture of species, while no such barriers oppose themselves to the blending of varieties. All these considerations taken together may fairly be considered as strengthening the belief that specific manifestations are relatively stable. At the same time the view advocated in this book does not depend upon, and is not identified with, any such stability. All that the Author contends for is that specific manifestation takes place along certain lines, and according to law, and not in an exceedingly minute, indefinite, and fortuitous manner. Finally, he cannot but feel justified, from all that has been brought forward, in reiterating the opening a.s.sertion of this chapter that something is still to be said for the view which maintains that species are stable, at least in the intervals of their comparatively rapid successive {128} manifestations.

CHAPTER VI.

SPECIES AND TIME.

Two relations of species to time.--No evidence of past existence of minutely intermediate forms when such might be expected _a priori_.--Bats, Pterodactyles, Dinosauria, and Birds.--Ichthyosauria, Chelonia, and Anoura.--Horse ancestry.--Labyrinthodonts and Trilobites.--Two subdivisions of the second relation of species to time.--Sir William Thomson's views.---Probable period required for ultimate specific evolution from primitive ancestral forms.--Geometrical increase of time required for rapidly multiplying increase of structural differences.--Proboscis monkey.--Time required for deposition of strata necessary for Darwinian evolution.--High organization of Silurian forms of life.--Absence of fossils in oldest rocks.--Summary and conclusion.

Two considerations present themselves with regard to the necessary relation of species to time if the theory of "Natural Selection" is valid and sufficient.

The first is with regard to the evidences of the past existence of intermediate form, their duration and succession.

The second is with regard to the total amount of time required for the evolution of all organic forms from a few original ones, and the bearing of other sciences on this question of time.

As to the first consideration, evidence is as yet against the modification of species by "Natural Selection" alone, because not only are minutely transitional forms generally absent, but they are absent in cases where we might certainly _a priori_ have expected them to be present. [Page 129]

Now it has been said:[125] "If Mr. Darwin's theory be true, the number of varieties differing one from another a very little must have been indefinitely great, so great indeed as probably far to exceed the number of individuals which have existed of any one variety. If this be true, it would be more probable that no two specimens preserved as fossils should be of one variety than that we should find a great many specimens collected from a very few varieties, provided, of course, the chances of preservation are equal for all individuals." "It is really strange that vast numbers of perfectly similar specimens should be found, the chances against their perpetuation as fossils are so great; but it is also very strange that the specimens should be so exactly alike as they are, if, in fact, they came and vanished by a gradual change."

Mr. Darwin attempts[126] to show cause why we should believe _a priori_ that intermediate varieties would exist in lesser numbers than the more extreme forms; but though they would doubtless do so sometimes, it seems too much to a.s.sert that they would do so generally, still less universally.

Now little less than universal and very marked inferiority in numbers would account for the absence of certain series of minutely intermediate fossil specimens. The ma.s.s of palaeontological evidence is indeed overwhelmingly against minute and gradual modification. It is true that when once an animal has obtained powers of flight its means of diffusion are indefinitely increased, and we might expect to find many relics of an aerial form and few of its antecedent state--with nascent wings just commencing their suspensory power. Yet had such a slow mode of origin, as Darwinians contend for, operated exclusively in all cases, it is absolutely incredible that birds, bats, and pterodactyles should have left the remains they have, and yet not a single relic be preserved in any one instance{130} of any of these different forms of wing in their incipient and relatively imperfect functional condition!

[Ill.u.s.tration: WING-BONES OF PTERODACTYLE, BAT, AND BIRD.]

Whenever the remains of bats have been found they have presented the exact type of existing forms, and there is as yet no indication of the conditions of an incipient elevation from the ground.

The pterodactyles, again, though a numerous group, are all true and perfect pterodactyles, though surely _some_ of the many incipient forms, which on the Darwinian theory have existed, must have had a good chance of preservation.

As to birds, the only notable instance in which discoveries recently made appear to fill up an important hiatus, is the interpretation given by Professor Huxley[127] to the remains of Dinosaurian reptiles, and which were noticed in the third chapter of this work. The learned Professor has (as also has Professor Cope in America) shown that in very important {131} and significant points the skeletons of the Iguanodon and of its allies approach very closely to that existing in the ostrich, emeu, rhea, &c. He has given weighty reasons for thinking that the line of affinity between birds and reptiles pa.s.ses to the birds last named from the Dinosauria rather than from the Pterodactyles, through Archeopteryx-like forms to the ordinary birds. Finally, he has thrown out the suggestion that the celebrated footsteps left by some extinct three-toed creatures on the very ancient sandstone of Connecticut were made, not, as. .h.i.therto supposed, by true birds, but by more or less ornithic reptiles. But even supposing all that is a.s.serted or inferred on this subject to be fully proved, it would not approach to a demonstration of specific origin by _minute_ modification. And though it harmonizes well with "Natural Selection," it is equally consistent with the rapid and sudden development of new specific forms of life. Indeed, Professor Huxley, with a laudable caution and moderation too little observed by some Teutonic Darwinians, guarded himself carefully from any imputation of a.s.serting dogmatically the theory of "Natural Selection," while upholding fully the doctrine of evolution.

But, after all, it is by no means certain, though very probable, that the Connecticut footsteps were made by very ornithic reptiles, or extremely sauroid birds. And it must not be forgotten that a completely carinate[128]

bird (the Archeopteryx) existed at a time, when, as yet, we have no evidence of some of the Dinosauria having come into being. Moreover, if the remarkable and minute similarity of the coracoid of a pterodactyle to that of a bird be merely the result of function and no sign of genetic affinity, it is not inconceivable that pelvic and leg resemblances of Dinosauria to birds may be functional likewise, though such an explanation is, of {132} course, by no means necessary to support the view maintained in this book.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCHEOPTERYX (OF THE OOLITE STRATA).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKELETON OF AN ICHTHYOSAURUS.]

But the number of forms represented by many individuals, yet by _no transitional ones_, is so great that only two or three can be selected as examples. Thus those remarkable fossil reptiles, the Ichthyosauria and Plesiosauria, extended, through the secondary period, probably over the greater part of the globe. Yet no single transitional form has yet been met with in spite of the mult.i.tudinous individuals preserved. Again, with their modern representatives the Cetacea, one or two aberrant forms alone {133} have been found, but no series of transitional ones indicating minutely the line of descent. This group, the whales, is a very marked one, and it is curious, on Darwinian principles, that so few instances tending to indicate its mode of origin should have presented themselves. Here, as in the bats, we might surely expect that some relics of unquestionably incipient stages of its development would have been left.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKELETON OF A PLESIOSAURUS.]

The singular order Chelonia, including the tortoises, turtles, and terrapins (or fresh-water tortoises), is another instance of an extreme form without any, as yet known, transitional stages. Another group may be finally mentioned, viz. the frogs and toads, anourous Batrachians, of which we have at present no relic of any kind linking them on to the Eft group on the one hand, or to reptiles on the other.

The only instance in which an approach towards a series of nearly related forms has been obtained is the existing horse, its predecessor Hipparion and other extinct forms. But even here there is no proof whatever of modification by minute and infinitesimal steps; _a fortiori_ no approach to a proof of modification by "Natural Selection," acting upon indefinite fortuitous variations. On the contrary, the series is an admirable example of successive modification in one special direction along one beneficial line, and the teleologist must here be allowed to consider that one {134} motive of this modification (among probably an indefinite number of motives inconceivable to us) was the relationship in which the horse was to stand to the human inhabitants of this planet. These extinct forms, as Professor Owen, remarks,[129] "differ from each other in a greater degree than do the horse, zebra, and a.s.s," which are not only good _zoological_ species as to form, but are species _physiologically_, _i.e._ they cannot produce a race of hybrids fertile _inter se_.

As to the mere action of surrounding conditions, the same Professor remarks:[130] "Any modification affecting the density of the soil might so far relate to the changes of limb-structure, as that a foot with a pair of small hoofs dangling by the sides of the large one, like those behind the cloven hoof of the ox, would cause the foot of Hipparion, _e.g._, and _a fortiori_ the broader based three-hoofed foot of the Palaeothere, to sink less deeply into swampy soil, and be more easily withdrawn than the more concentratively simplified and specialized foot of the horse. Rhinoceroses and zebras, however, tread together the arid plains of Africa in the present day; and the horse has multiplied in that half of America where two or more kinds of tapir still exist. That the continents of the Eocene or Miocene periods were less diversified in respect of swamp and sward, pampas or desert, than those of the Pliocene period, has no support from observation or a.n.a.logy."

Not only, however, do we fail to find any traces of the incipient stages of numerous very peculiar groups of animals, but it is undeniable that there are instances which appeared at first to indicate a _gradual transition_, yet which instances have been shown by further investigation and discovery not to indicate truly anything of the kind. Thus at one time the remains of Labyrinthodonts, which up till then had been discovered, seemed to justify the opinion that as time went on, forms had successively appeared with{135} more and more complete segmentation and ossification of the backbone, which in the earliest forms was (as it is in the lowest fishes now) a soft continuous rod or notochord. Now, however, it is considered probable that the soft back-boned Labyrinthodont Archegosaurus, was an immature or larval form,[131] while Labyrinthodonts with completely developed vertebrae have been found to exist amongst the very earliest forms yet discovered. The same may be said regarding the eyes of the trilobites, some of the oldest forms having been found as well furnished in that respect as the very last of the group which has left its remains accessible to observation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRILOBITE.]

Such instances, however, as well as the way in which marked and special forms (as the Pterodactyles, &c., before referred to) appear at once in and similarly disappear from the geological record, are of course explicable on the Darwinian theory, provided a sufficiently enormous amount of past time be allowed. The alleged extreme, and probably great, imperfection of that record may indeed be pleaded in excuse. But it _is_ an excuse.[132] {136} Nor is it possible to deny the _a priori_ probability of the preservation of at least a few _minutely transitional_ forms in some instances if _every_ species without exception has arisen exclusively by such minute and gradual transitions.

It remains, then, to turn to the other considerations with regard to the relation of species to time: namely (1) as to the total amount of time allowable by other sciences for organic evolution; and (2) the proportion existing, on Darwinian principles, between the time anterior to the earlier fossils, and the time since; as evidenced by the proportion between the amount of evolutionary change during the latter epoch and that which must have occurred anteriorly.

Sir William Thomson has lately[133] advanced arguments from three distinct lines of inquiry, and agreeing in one approximate result. The three lines of inquiry were--1. The action of the tides upon the earth's rotation. 2.

The probable length of time during which the sun has illuminated this planet; and 3. The temperature of the interior of the earth. The result arrived at by these investigations is a conclusion that the existing state of things on the earth, life on the earth, all geological history showing continuity of life, must be limited within some such period of past time as one hundred million years. The first question which suggests itself, supposing Sir W. Thomson's views to be correct, is, Is this period anything like enough for the evolution of all organic forms by "Natural Selection"?

The second is, Is this period anything like enough for the deposition of the strata which must have been deposited if all organic forms have been evolved by _minute_ steps, according to the Darwinian theory?

In the first place, as to Sir William Thomson's views, the Author of this book cannot presume to advance any opinion; but the fact that they have not been refuted, pleads strongly in their favour when we consider how {137} much they tell against the theory of Mr. Darwin. The last-named author only remarks that "many of the elements in the calculation are more or less doubtful,"[134] and Professor Huxley[135] does not attempt to _refute_ Sir W. Thomson's arguments, but only to show cause for suspense of judgment, inasmuch as the facts _may be_ capable of other explanations.

Mr. Wallace, on the other hand,[136] seems more disposed to accept them, and, after considering Sir William's objections and those of Mr. Croll, puts the probable date of the beginning of the Cambrian deposits[137] at only twenty-four million years ago. On the other hand, he seems to consider that specific change has been more rapid than generally supposed, and exceptionally stable during the last score or so of thousand years.

Now, first, with regard to the time required for the evolution of all organic forms by merely accidental, minute, and fortuitous variations, the useful ones of which have been preserved:

Mr. Murphy[138] is distinctly of opinion that there has not been time enough. He says, "I am inclined to think that geological time is too short for the evolution of the higher forms of life out of the lower by that acc.u.mulation of imperceptibly slow variations, to which alone Darwin ascribes the whole process."

"Darwin justly mentions the greyhound as being equal to any natural species in the perfect co-ordination of its parts, 'all adapted for extreme fleetness and for running down weak prey.'" "Yet it is an artificial species (and not _physiologically_ a species _at all_), formed by long-continued selection under domestication; and there is no reason to suppose that any of the variations which have been selected to form it have been other than gradual and almost imperceptible. Suppose that it has {138} taken five hundred years to form the greyhound out of his wolf-like ancestor. This is a mere guess, but it gives the order of the magnitude."

Now, if so, "how long would it take to obtain an elephant from a protozoon, or even from a tadpole-like fish? Ought it not to take much more than a million times as long?"[139]

Mr. Darwin[140] would compare with the natural origin of a species "unconscious selection, that is, the preservation of the most useful or beautiful animals, with no intention of modifying the breed." He adds: "But by this process of unconscious selection, various breeds have been sensibly changed in the course of two or three centuries."