< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

58

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

among them consequent on the likeness of their respective relations to the matters and forces around; and there will result, in some cases, the differences due to the differential effects of these matters and forces, and in other cases, the changes which, being life-sustaining or life-destroying, eventuate in certain natural selections.

I have, above, made a passing reference to the fact that Mr. Darwin did not fail to take account of some among these effects directly produced on organisms by surrounding inorganic agencies. Here are extracts from the sixth edition of the Origin of Species showing this.

"It is very difficult to decide how far changed conditions, such as of climate, food, &c., have acted in a definite manner. There is reason to believe that in the course of time the effects have been greater than can he proved by clear evidence. . . . Mr. Gould believes that birds of the same species are more brightly coloured under a clear atmosphere, than when living near the coast or on islands; and Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea affects the colours of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which, when growing near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy "(pp. 106-7). "Some observers are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair, and that with the hair the horns are correlated" (p. 159).

In his subsequent work, Animals and Plants under Domestication, Mr. Darwin still more clearly recognizes these causes of change in organization. A chapter is devoted to the subject. After premising that "the direct action of the conditions of life, whether leading to definite or indefinite results, is a totally distinct consideration from the effects of natural selection;" he goes on to say that changed conditions of life "have acted so definitely and powerfully on the organization of our domesticated productions, that they have sufficed to form new sub-varieties or races, without the aid of selection by man or of natural selection." Of his examples here are two.

"I have given in detail in the ninth chapter the most remarkable case known to me, namely, that in Germany several varieties of maize brought from the hotter parts of America were transformed in the course of only two or three generations." (Vol. ii, p. 277.) [And in this ninth chapter concerning these and other such instances he says "some of the foregoing differences would certainly be considered of specific value with plants in a state of nature." (Vol. i, p. 321.)] "Mr. Meehan, in a remarkable paper, compares twenty-nine kinds of American trees, belonging to various orders, with their nearest European allies, all grown in close proximity in the same garden and under as nearly as possible the same conditions." And then enumerating six traits in which the American forms all of them differ in like ways from their allied European forms, Mr. Darwin thinks there is no choice but to conclude that these "have been definitely caused by the long-continued action of the different climate of the two continents on the trees." (Vol. ii, pp. 281-2.)

But the fact we have to note is that while Mr. Darwin thus took account of special effects due to special amounts and combinations of agencies in the environment, he did not take account of the far more important effects due to the general and constant operation of these

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.