The Foundations of the Origin of Species Part 21

Abortive organs, which must be considered as useless as far as their ordinary and normal purpose is concerned, are sometimes adapted to other ends{492}: thus the marsupial bones, which properly serve to support the young in the mother's pouch, are present in the male and serve as the fulcrum for muscles connected only with male functions: in the male of the marigold flower the pistil is abortive for its proper end of being impregnated, but serves to sweep the pollen out of the anthers{493} ready to be borne by insects to the perfect pistils in the other florets. It is likely in many cases, yet unknown to us, that abortive organs perform some useful function; but in other cases, for instance in that of teeth embedded in the solid jaw-bone, or of mere k.n.o.bs, the rudiments of stamens and pistils, the boldest imagination will hardly venture to ascribe to them any function. Abortive parts, even when wholly useless to the individual species, are of great signification in the system of nature; for they are often found to be of very high importance in a natural cla.s.sification{494}; thus the presence and position of entire abortive flowers, in the gra.s.ses, cannot be overlooked in attempting to arrange them according to their true affinities. This corroborates a statement in a previous chapter, viz.

that the physiological importance of a part is no index of its importance in cla.s.sification. Finally, abortive organs often are only developed, proportionally with other parts, in the embryonic or young state of each species{495}; this again, especially considering the cla.s.sificatory importance of abortive organs, is evidently part of the law (stated in the last chapter) that the higher affinities of organisms are often best seen in the stages towards maturity, through which the embryo pa.s.ses. On the ordinary view of individual creations, I think that scarcely any cla.s.s of facts in natural history are more wonderful or less capable of receiving explanation.

{492} The case of rudimentary organs adapted to new purposes is discussed in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 451, vi. p. 620.

{493} This is here stated on the authority of Sprengel; see also _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 452, vi. p. 621.

{494} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 455, vi. p. 627. In the margin R. Brown's name is given apparently as the authority for the fact.

{495} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 455, vi. p. 626.

_The abortive organs of physiologists._

Physiologists and medical men apply the term "abortive" in a somewhat different sense from naturalists; and their application is probably the primary one; namely, to parts, which from accident or disease before birth are not developed or do not grow{496}: thus, when a young animal is born with a little stump in the place of a finger or of the whole extremity, or with a little b.u.t.ton instead of a head, or with a mere bead of bony matter instead of a tooth, or with a stump instead of a tail, these parts are said to be aborted. Naturalists on the other hand, as we have seen, apply this term to parts not stunted during the growth of the embryo, but which are as regularly produced in successive generations as any other most essential parts of the structure of the individual: naturalists, therefore, use this term in a metaphorical sense. These two cla.s.ses of facts, however, blend into each other{497}; by parts accidentally aborted, during the embryonic life of one individual, becoming hereditary in the succeeding generations: thus a cat or dog, born with a stump instead of a tail, tends to transmit stumps to their offspring; and so it is with stumps representing the extremities; and so again with flowers, with defective and rudimentary parts, which are annually produced in new flower-buds and even in successive seedlings. The strong hereditary tendency to reproduce every either congenital or slowly acquired structure, whether useful or injurious to the individual, has been shown in the first part; so that we need feel no surprise at these truly abortive parts becoming hereditary. A curious instance of the force of hereditariness is sometimes seen in two little loose hanging horns, quite useless as far as the function of a horn is concerned, which are produced in hornless races of our domestic cattle{498}. Now I believe no real distinction can be drawn between a stump representing a tail or a horn or the extremities; or a short shrivelled stamen without any pollen; or a dimple in a petal representing a nectary, when such rudiments are regularly reproduced in a race or family, and the true abortive organs of naturalists. And if we had reason to believe (which I think we have not) that all abortive organs had been at some period _suddenly_ produced during the embryonic life of an individual, and afterwards become inherited, we should at once have a simple explanation of the origin of abortive and rudimentary organs{499}. In the same manner as during changes of p.r.o.nunciation certain letters in a word may become useless{500} in p.r.o.nouncing it, but yet may aid us in searching for its derivation, so we can see that rudimentary organs, no longer useful to the individual, may be of high importance in ascertaining its descent, that is, its true cla.s.sification in the natural system.

{496} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 454, vi. p. 625.

{497} In the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 454, vi. p. 625, the author in referring to semi-monstrous variations adds "But I doubt whether any of these cases throw light on the origin of rudimentary organs in a state of nature." In 1844 he was clearly more inclined to an opposite opinion.

{498} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 454, vi. p. 625.

{499} See _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 454, vi. p. 625. The author there discusses monstrosities in relation to rudimentary organs, and comes to the conclusion that disuse is of more importance, giving as a reason his doubt "whether species under nature ever undergo abrupt changes." It seems to me that in the _Origin_ he gives more weight to the "Lamarckian factor" than he did in 1844. Huxley took the opposite view, see the Introduction.

{500} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 455, vi. p. 627.

_Abortion from gradual disuse._

There seems to be some probability that continued disuse of any part or organ, and the selection of individuals with such parts slightly less developed, would in the course of ages produce in organic beings under domesticity races with such parts abortive. We have every reason to believe that every part and organ in an individual becomes fully developed only with exercise of its functions; that it becomes developed in a somewhat lesser degree with less exercise; and if forcibly precluded from all action, such part will often become atrophied. Every peculiarity, let it be remembered, tends, especially where both parents have it, to be inherited. The less power of flight in the common duck compared with the wild, must be partly attributed to disuse{501} during successive generations, and as the wing is properly adapted to flight, we must consider our domestic duck in the first stage towards the state of the Apteryx, in which the wings are so curiously abortive. Some naturalists have attributed (and possibly with truth) the falling ears so characteristic of most domestic dogs, some rabbits, oxen, cats, goats, horses, &c., &c., as the effects of the lesser use of the muscles of these flexible parts during successive generations of inactive life; and muscles, which cannot perform their functions, must be considered verging towards abortion. In flowers, again, we see the gradual abortion during successive seedlings (though this is more properly a conversion) of stamens into imperfect petals, and finally into perfect petals. When the eye is blinded in early life the optic nerve sometimes becomes atrophied; may we not believe that where this organ, as is the case with the subterranean mole-like Tuco-tuco <_ctenomys_>{502}, is frequently impaired and lost, that in the course of generations the whole organ might become abortive, as it normally is in some burrowing quadrupeds having nearly similar habits with the Tuco-tuco?

{501} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 11, vi. p. 13, where drooping-ears of domestic animals are also given.

{502} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 137, vi. p. 170.

In as far then as it is admitted as probable that the effects of disuse (together with occasional true and sudden abortions during the embryonic period) would cause a part to be less developed, and finally to become abortive and useless; then during the infinitely numerous changes of habits in the many descendants from a common stock, we might fairly have expected that cases of organs becom abortive would have been numerous.

The preservation of the stump of the tail, as usually happens when an animal is born tailless, we can only explain by the strength of the hereditary principle and by the period in embryo when affected{503}: but on the theory of disuse gradually obliterating a part, we can see, according to the principles explained in the last chapter (viz. of hereditariness at corresponding periods of life{504}, together with the use and disuse of the part in question not being brought into play in early or embryonic life), that organs or parts would tend not to be utterly obliterated, but to be reduced to that state in which they existed in early embryonic life. Owen often speaks of a part in a full-grown animal being in an "embryonic condition." Moreover we can thus see why abortive organs are most developed at an early period of life. Again, by gradual selection, we can see how an organ rendered abortive in its primary use might be converted to other purposes; a duck's wing might come to serve for a fin, as does that of the penguin; an abortive bone might come to serve, by the slow increment and change of place in the muscular fibres, as a fulcrum for a new series of muscles; the pistil{505} of the marigold might become abortive as a reproductive part, but be continued in its function of sweeping the pollen out of the anthers; for if in this latter respect the abortion had not been checked by selection, the species must have become extinct from the pollen remaining enclosed in the capsules of the anthers.

{503} These words seem to have been inserted as an afterthought.

{504} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 444, vi. p. 611.

{505} This and similar cases occur in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 452, vi. p. 621.

Finally then I must repeat that these wonderful facts of organs formed with traces of exquisite care, but now either absolutely useless or adapted to ends wholly different from their ordinary end, being present and forming part of the structure of almost every inhabitant of this world, both in long-past and present times--being best developed and often only discoverable at a very early embryonic period, and being full of signification in arranging the long series of organic beings in a natural system--these wonderful facts not only receive a simple explanation on the theory of long-continued selection of many species from a few common parent-stocks, but necessarily follow from this theory. If this theory be rejected, these facts remain quite inexplicable; without indeed we rank as an explanation such loose metaphors as that of De Candolle's{506}, in which the kingdom of nature is compared to a well-covered table, and the abortive organs are considered as put in for the sake of symmetry!

{506} The metaphor of the dishes is given in the Essay of 1842, p.

47, note 3.{Note 173}

CHAPTER X

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

_Recapitulation._

I will now recapitulate the course of this work, more fully with respect to the former parts, and briefly

{507} Compare however Darwin's later view:--"The possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated,"

_Origin_, Ed. i. p. 20, vi. p. 23. The author's change of opinion was no doubt partly due to his experience in breeding pigeons.

In the second chapter it was shown that wild organisms undoubtedly vary in some slight degree: and that the kind of variation, though much less in degree, is similar to that of domestic organisms. It is highly probable that every organic being, if subjected during several generations to new and varying conditions, would vary. It is certain that organisms, living in an _isolated_ country which is undergoing geological changes, must in the course of time be so subjected to new conditions; moreover an organism, when by chance transported into a new station, for instance into an island, will often be exposed to new conditions, and be surrounded by a new series of organic beings. If there were no power at work selecting every slight variation, which opened new sources of subsistence to a being thus situated, the effects of crossing, the chance of death and the constant tendency to reversion to the old parent-form, would prevent the production of new races. If there were any selective agency at work, it seems impossible to a.s.sign any limit{508} to the complexity and beauty of the adaptive structures, which _might_ thus be produced: for certainly the limit of possible variation of organic beings, either in a wild or domestic state, is not known.

{508} In the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 469, vi. p. 644, Darwin makes a strong statement to this effect.

It was then shown, from the geometrically increasing tendency of each species to multiply (as evidenced from what we know of mankind and of other animals when favoured by circ.u.mstances), and from the means of subsistence of each species on an _average_ remaining constant, that during some part of the life of each, or during every few generations, there must be a severe struggle for existence; and that less than a grain{509} in the balance will determine which individuals shall live and which perish. In a country, therefore, undergoing changes, and cut off from the free immigration of species better adapted to the new station and conditions, it cannot be doubted that there is a most powerful means of selection, _tending_ to preserve even the slightest variation, which aided the subsistence or defence of those organic beings, during any part of their whole existence, whose organization had been rendered plastic. Moreover, in animals in which the s.e.xes are distinct, there is a s.e.xual struggle, by which the most vigorous, and consequently the best adapted, will oftener procreate their kind.

{509} "A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die," _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 467, vi. p. 642. A similar statement occurs in the 1842 Essay, p. 8, note 3.{Note 59}

A new race thus formed by natural selection would be undistinguishable from a species. For comparing, on the one hand, the several species of a genus, and on the other hand several domestic races from a common stock, we cannot discriminate them by the amount of external difference, but only, first, by domestic races not remaining so constant or being so "true" as species are; and secondly by races always producing fertile offspring when crossed. And it was then shown that a race naturally selected--from the variation being slower--from the selection steadily leading towards the same ends{510}, and from every new slight change in structure being adapted (as is implied by its selection) to the new conditions and being fully exercised, and lastly from the freedom from occasional crosses with other species, would almost necessarily be "truer" than a race selected by ignorant or capricious and short-lived man. With respect to the sterility of species when crossed, it was shown not to be a universal character, and when present to vary in degree: sterility also was shown probably to depend less on external than on const.i.tutional differences. And it was shown that when individual animals and plants are placed under new conditions, they become, without losing their healths, as sterile, in the same manner and to the same degree, as hybrids; and it is therefore conceivable that the cross-bred offspring between two species, having different const.i.tutions, might have its const.i.tution affected in the same peculiar manner as when an individual animal or plant is placed under new conditions. Man in selecting domestic races has little wish and still less power to adapt the whole frame to new conditions; in nature, however, where each species survives by a struggle against other species and external nature, the result must be very different.

{510} Thus according to the author what is now known as _orthogenesis_ is due to selection.

Races descending from the same stock were then compared with species of the same genus, and they were found to present some striking a.n.a.logies.

The offspring also of races when crossed, that is mongrels, were compared with the cross-bred offspring of species, that is hybrids, and they were found to resemble each other in all their characters, with the one exception of sterility, and even this, when present, often becomes after some generations variable in degree. The chapter was summed up, and it was shown that no ascertained limit to the amount of variation is known; or could be predicted with due time and changes of condition granted. It was then admitted that although the production of new races, undistinguishable from true species, is probable, we must look to the relations in the past and present geographical distribution of the infinitely numerous beings, by which we are surrounded--to their affinities and to their structure--for any direct evidence.

In the third chapter the inheritable variations in the mental phenomena of domestic and of wild organic beings were considered. It was shown that we are not concerned in this work with the first origin of the leading mental qualities; but that tastes, pa.s.sions, dispositions, consensual movements, and habits all became, either congenitally or during mature life, modified and were inherited. Several of these modified habits were found to correspond in every essential character with true instincts, and they were found to follow the same laws.

Instincts and dispositions &c. are fully as important to the preservation and increase of a species as its corporeal structure; and therefore the natural means of selection would act on and modify them equally with corporeal structures. This being granted, as well as the proposition that mental phenomena are variable, and that the modifications are inheritable, the possibility of the several most complicated instincts being slowly acquired was considered, and it was shown from the very imperfect series in the instincts of the animals now existing, that we are not justified in _prima facie_ rejecting a theory of the common descent of allied organisms from the difficulty of imagining the transitional stages in the various now most complicated and wonderful instincts. We were thus led on to consider the same question with respect both to highly complicated organs, and to the aggregate of several such organs, that is individual organic beings; and it was shown, by the same method of taking the existing most imperfect series, that we ought not at once to reject the theory, because we cannot trace the transitional stages in such organs, or conjecture the transitional habits of such individual species.

In the Second Part{511} the direct evidence of allied forms having descended from the same stock was discussed. It was shown that this theory requires a long series of intermediate forms between the species and groups in the same cla.s.ses--forms not directly intermediate between existing species, but intermediate with a common parent. It was admitted that if even all the preserved fossils and existing species were collected, such a series would be far from being formed; but it was shown that we have not _good_ evidence that the oldest known deposits are contemporaneous with the first appearance of living beings; or that the several subsequent formations are nearly consecutive; or that any one formation preserves a nearly perfect fauna of even the hard marine organisms, which lived in that quarter of the world. Consequently, we have no reason to suppose that more than a small fraction of the organisms which have lived at any one period have ever been preserved; and hence that we ought not to expect to discover the fossilised sub-varieties between any two species. On the other hand, the evidence, though extremely imperfect, drawn from fossil remains, as far as it does go, is in favour of such a series of organisms having existed as that required. This want of evidence of the past existence of almost infinitely numerous intermediate forms, is, I conceive, much the weightiest difficulty{512} on the theory of common descent; but I must think that this is due to ignorance necessarily resulting from the imperfection of all geological records.

{511} Part II begins with Ch. IV. See the Introduction, where the absence of division into two parts (in the _Origin_) is discussed.

{512} In the recapitulation in the last chapter of the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 475, vi. p. 651, the author does not insist on this point as the weightiest difficulty, though he does so in Ed. i. p. 299.

It is possible that he had come to think less of the difficulty in question: this was certainly the case when he wrote the 6th edition, see p. 438.

In the fifth chapter it was shown that new species gradually{513} appear, and that the old ones gradually disappear, from the earth; and this strictly accords with our theory. The extinction of species seems to be preceded by their rarity; and if this be so, no one ought to feel more surprise at a species being exterminated than at its being rare.

Every species which is not increasing in number must have its geometrical tendency to increase checked by some agency seldom accurately perceived by us. Each slight increase in the power of this unseen checking agency would cause a corresponding decrease in the average numbers of that species, and the species would become rarer: we feel not the least surprise at one species of a genus being rare and another abundant; why then should we be surprised at its extinction, when we have good reason to believe that this very rarity is its regular precursor and cause.

{513} The fauna changes singly .

In the sixth chapter the leading facts in the geographical distribution of organic beings were considered--namely, the dissimilarity in areas widely and effectually separated, of the organic beings being exposed to very similar conditions (as for instance, within the tropical forests of Africa and America, or on the volcanic islands adjoining them). Also the striking similarity and general relations of the inhabitants of the same great continents, conjoined with a lesser degree of dissimilarity in the inhabitants living on opposite sides of the barriers intersecting it--whether or not these opposite sides are exposed to similar conditions. Also the dissimilarity, though in a still lesser degree, in the inhabitants of different islands in the same archipelago, together with their similarity taken as a whole with the inhabitants of the nearest continent, whatever its character may be. Again, the peculiar relations of Alpine floras; the absence of mammifers on the smaller isolated islands; and the comparative fewness of the plants and other organisms on islands with diversified stations; the connection between the possibility of occasional transportal from one country to another, with an affinity, though not ident.i.ty, of the organic beings inhabiting them. And lastly, the clear and striking relations between the living and the extinct in the same great divisions of the world; which relation, if we look very far backward, seems to die away. These facts, if we bear in mind the geological changes in progress, all simply follow from the proposition of allied organic beings having lineally descended from common parent-stocks. On the theory of independent creations they must remain, though evidently connected together, inexplicable and disconnected.

In the seventh chapter, the relationship or grouping of extinct and recent species; the appearance and disappearance of groups; the ill-defined objects of the natural cla.s.sification, not depending on the similarity of organs physiologically important, not being influenced by adaptive or a.n.a.logical characters, though these often govern the whole economy of the individual, but depending on any character which varies least, and especially on the forms through which the embryo pa.s.ses, and, as was afterwards shown, on the presence of rudimentary and useless organs. The alliance between the nearest species in _distinct_ groups being general and not especial; the close similarity in the rules and objects in cla.s.sifying domestic races and true species. All these facts were shown to follow on the natural system being a genealogical system.

In the eighth chapter, the unity of structure throughout large groups, in species adapted to the most different lives, and the wonderful metamorphosis (used metaphorically by naturalists) of one part or organ into another, were shown to follow simply on new species being produced by the selection and inheritance of successive _small_ changes of structure. The unity of type is wonderfully manifested by the similarity of structure, during the embryonic period, in the species of entire cla.s.ses. To explain this it was shown that the different races of our domestic animals differ less, during their young state, than when full grown; and consequently, if species are produced like races, the same fact, on a greater scale, might have been expected to hold good with them. This remarkable law of nature was attempted to be explained through establishing, by sundry facts, that slight variations originally appear during all periods of life, and that when inherited they tend to appear at the corresponding period of life; according to these principles, in several species descended from the same parent-stock, their embryos would almost necessarily much more closely resemble each other than they would in their adult state. The importance of these embryonic resemblances, in making out a natural or genealogical cla.s.sification, thus becomes at once obvious. The occasional greater simplicity of structure in the mature animal than in the embryo; the gradation in complexity of the species in the great cla.s.ses; the adaptation of the larvae of animals to independent powers of existence; the immense difference in certain animals in their larval and mature states, were all shown on the above principles to present no difficulty.