The Foundations of the Origin of Species

I imagine the meaning to be that abortive organs are specific characters in contrast to monstrosities.

168

Minute hanging horns are mentioned in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 454, vi. p. 625, as occurring in hornless breeds of cattle.

169

Linum flavum is dimorphic: thyme gynodiæcious. It is not clear what point is referred to under Geranium pyrenaicum.

170

The author’s work on duck’s wings &c. is in Var. under Dom., Ed. 2, i. p. 299.

171

The words vis medicatrix are inserted after “useless,” apparently as a memorandum.

172

In the male florets of certain Compositæ the style functions merely as a piston for forcing out the pollen.

173

«On the back of the page is the following.» If abortive organs are a trace preserved by hereditary tendency, of organ in ancestor of use, we can at once see why important in natural classification, also why more plain in young animal because, as in last section, the selection has altered the old animal most. I repeat, these wondrous facts, of parts created for no use in past and present time, all can by my theory receive simple explanation; or they receive none and we must be content with some such empty metaphor, as that of De Candolle, who compares creation to a well covered table, and says abortive organs may be compared to the dishes (some should be empty) placed symmetrically!

174

The author doubtless meant that the complex relationships between organisms can be roughly represented by a net in which the knots stand for species.

175

Between the lines occurs: – “one «?» form be lost.”

176

The original sentence is here broken up by the insertion of: – “out of the dust of Java, Sumatra, these «?» allied to past and present age and «illegible», with the stamp of inutility in some of their organs and conversion in others.”

177

Between the lines occur the words: – “Species vary according to same general laws as varieties; they cross according to same laws.”

178

“A cross with a bull-dog has affected for many generations the courage and obstinacy of greyhounds,” Origin, Ed. i. p. 214, vi. p. 327.

179

The simile of the savage and the ship occurs in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 485, vi. p. 665.

180

In the Origin, Ed. i. p. 486, vi. p. 665, the author speaks of the “summing up of many contrivances”: I have therefore introduced the above words which make the passage clearer. In the Origin the comparison is with “a great mechanical invention,” – not with a work of art.

181

See a similar passage in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 487, vi. p. 667.

182

See the Origin, Ed. i. p. 488, vi. p. 668.

183

The following discussion, together with some memoranda are on the last page of the MS. “The supposed creative spirit does not create either number or kind which «are» from analogy adapted to site (viz. New Zealand): it does not keep them all permanently adapted to any country, – it works on spots or areas of creation, – it is not persistent for great periods, – it creates forms of same groups in same regions, with no physical similarity, – it creates, on islands or mountain summits, species allied to the neighbouring ones, and not allied to alpine nature as shown in other mountain summits – even different on different island of similarly constituted archipelago, not created on two points: never mammifers created on small isolated island; nor number of organisms adapted to locality: its power seems influenced or related to the range of other species wholly distinct of the same genus, – it does not equally effect, in amount of difference, all the groups of the same class.”

184

This passage is the ancestor of the concluding words in the first edition of the Origin of Species which have remained substantially unchanged throughout subsequent editions, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” In the 2nd edition “by the Creator” is introduced after “originally breathed.”

185

Compare the Origin, Ed. i. p. 481, vi. p. 659, “The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the coast-waves.”

186

The cumulative effect of domestication is insisted on in the Origin, see e. g. Origin, Ed. i. p. 7, vi. p. 8.

187

This type of variation passes into what he describes as the direct effect of conditions. Since they are due to causes acting during the adult life of the organism they might be called individual variations, but he uses this term for congenital variations, e. g. the differences discoverable in plants raised from seeds of the same pod (Origin, Ed. i. p. 45, vi. p. 53).

188

«It is not clear where the following note is meant to come»: Case of Orchis, – most remarkable as not long cultivated by seminal propagation. Case of varieties which soon acquire, like Ægilops and Carrot (and Maize) a certain general character and then go on varying.

189

Here, as in the MS. of 1842, the author is inclined to minimise the variation occurring in nature.

190

This is more strongly stated than in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 30.

191

See Origin, Ed. i. p. 13.

192