13 - Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Or
13-05 - Descent always used in classification
With species in a state of nature, every naturalist has in fact brought descent into his classification; for he includes in his lowest grade, or that of a species, the two sexes; and how enormously these sometimes differ in the most important characters, is known to every naturalist: scarcely a single fact can be predicated in common of the males and hermaphrodites of certain cirripedes, when adult, and yet no one dreams of separating them.
The naturalist includes as one species the several larval stages of the same individual, however much they may differ from each other and from the adult; as he likewise includes the so-called alternate generations of Steenstrup, which can only in a technical sense be considered as the same individual.
He includes monsters; he includes varieties, not solely because they closely resemble the parent-form, but because they are descended from it.
He who believes that the cowslip is descended from the primrose, or conversely, ranks them together as a single species, and gives a single definition.
As soon as three Orchidean forms (Monochanthus, Myanthus, and Catasetum), which had previously been ranked as three distinct genera, were known to be sometimes produced on the same spike, they were immediately included as a single species.
12 - Geographical Distribution -- continued
12-30 - Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals
Yet it cannot be said that small islands will not support small mammals, for they occur in many parts of the world on very small islands, if close to a continent; and hardly an island can be named on which our smaller quadrupeds have not become naturalised and greatly multiplied.
It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation, that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown by the stupendous degradation which they have suffered and by their tertiary strata: there has also been time for the production of endemic species belonging to other classes; and on continents it is thought that mammals appear and disappear at a quicker rate than other and lower animals.
Though terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do occur on almost every island.
New Zealand possesses two bats found nowhere else in the world: Norfolk Island, the Viti Archipelago, the Bonin Islands, the Caroline and Marianne Archipelagoes, and Mauritius, all possess their peculiar bats.
Why, it may be asked, has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands? On my view this question can easily be answered; for no terrestrial mammal can be transported across a wide space of sea, but bats can fly across.
Bats have been seen wandering by day far over the Atlantic Ocean; and two North American species either regularly or occasionally visit Bermuda, at the distance of 600 miles from the mainland.
I hear from Mr.Tomes, who has specially studied this family, that many of the same species have enormous ranges, and are found on continents and on far distant islands.
Hence we have only to suppose that such wandering species have been modified through natural selection in their new homes in relation to their new position, and we can understand the presence of endemic bats on islands, with the absence of all terrestrial mammals.
01 - Variations Under Domestication
01-10 - Methodical and Unconscious Selection
Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course of selection, which may be considered as unconscious, in so far that the breeders could never have expected, or even wished, to produce the result which ensued- namely, the production of two distinct strains.
The two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as Mr. Youatt remarks, "have been purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years.
There is not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with the subject, that the owner of either of them has deviated in any one instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the difference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that they have the appearance of being quite different varieties."