"
This chapter must be studied in the original text, the arguments by
which its conclusions are supported hardly admitting of brief analysis.
The most superficial reader will be interested in Mr. Agassiz's
account of the mode in which he sought for the natural boundaries
of the various divisions, by observing the special point of view
in which various eminent naturalists have considered their subject;
as, for instance, Audubon, among the biographers of species,--
Latreille, among the students of genera,--and Cuvier, at the head
of those who have contemplated the higher groups, such as classes
and types. The most indifferent reader will be arrested by the
opinions boldly promulgated with reference to species.
"The evidence that all animals have originated in large numbers is
growing so strong, that the idea that every species existed in the
beginning in single pairs may be said to be given up almost entirely
by naturalists." "If we are led to admit as the beginning of each
species the simultaneous origin of a large number of individuals, if
the same species may originate at the same time in different
localities, these first representatives of each species, at least,
were not connected by sexual derivation; and as this applies equally
to any first pair, this fancied test criterion of specific identity
must at all events be given up, and with it goes also the pretended
real existence of the species, in contradistinction from the mode of
existence of genera, families, orders, classes, and types; for what
really exists are individuals, not species.
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