On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, by Charles Darwin, Part 7

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Adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath in. Let it out slowly. And off we go. Tonight we continue an annual tradition on Boring Books for Bedtime and celebrate Darwin Day on February 12th by relaxing with more from a foundational classic of science. We're reading On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin M.A., fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnaean, etc. Societies, author of Journal of Researches During HMS Beagle's Voyage Round the World, from the first edition, published in 1859 by John Murray, Abomaral Street, London. Let's pick up right where we left off in the middle of Chapter 4, Natural Selection. Let's begin. The truth of the principle that the greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification of structure is seen under many natural circumstances. In an extremely small area, especially if freely open to immigration, and where the contest between individual and individual must be severe, we always find great diversity in its inhabitants. For instance, I found that a piece of turf, three feet by four in size, which had been exposed for many years to exactly the same conditions, supported twenty species of plants, and these belonged to eighteen genera and to eight orders, which shows how much these plants differed from each other. So it is with the plants and insects on small and uniform islets, and so in small ponds of fresh water. Farmers find that they can raise most food by a rotation of plants belonging to the most different orders. Nature follows what may be called a simultaneous rotation. Most of the animals and plants which live close round any small piece of ground could live on it, supposing it not to be in any way peculiar in its nature, and may be said to be striving to the utmost to live there. But it is seen that where they come into the closest competition with each other, the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders. The same principle is seen in the naturalization of plants through man's agency in foreign lands. It might have been expected that the plants which have succeeded in becoming naturalized in any land would generally have been closely allied to the indigenes, for these are commonly looked at as especially created and adapted for their own country. It might also perhaps have been expected that naturalized plants would have belonged to a few groups, more especially adapted to certain stations in their new homes. But the case is very different, and Alphonse de Candol has well remarked in his great and admirable work that floras gain by naturalization, proportionally with the number of the native genera and species, far more in new genera than in new species. To give a single instance, in the last edition of Dr. Asa Gray's Manual of the Flora of the Northern United States, 260 naturalized plants are enumerated, and these belong to 162 genera. We thus see that these naturalized plants are of a highly diversified nature. They differ, moreover, to a large extent from the indigenes, for out of the 162 genera, no less than 100 genera are not there indigenous, and thus a large proportional addition is made to the genera of these states. By considering the nature of the plants or animals which have struggled successfully with the indigenes of any country, and have there become naturalized, we can gain some crude idea in what manner some of the natives would have had to be modified, in order to have gained an advantage over the other natives. and we may, I think, at least safely infer that diversification of structure amounting to new generic differences would have been profitable to them. The advantage of diversification in the inhabitants of the same region is, in fact, the same as that of the physiological division of labor in the organs of the same individual body, a subject so well elucidated by Milne Edwards. No physiologist doubts that a stomach, by being adapted to digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh alone, draws most nutriment from these substances. So in the general economy of any land, the more widely and perfectly the animals and plants are diversified for different habits of life, so will a greater number of individuals be capable of their supporting themselves. A set of animals with their organization but little diversified could hardly compete with a set more perfectly diversified in structure. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the Australian marsupials, which are divided into groups differing but little from each other and feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse and others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and rodent mammals could successfully compete with these well-pronounced orders. In the Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification in an early and incomplete stage of development. After the foregoing discussion, which ought to have been much amplified, we may, I think, assume that the modified descendants of any one species will succeed by so much the better as they become more diversified in structure and are thus enabled to encroach on places occupied by other beings. Now let us see how this principle of great benefit being derived from divergence of character, combined with the principles of natural selection and of extinction, will tend to act. The accompanying diagram will aid us in understanding this rather perplexing subject. Let A to L represent the species of a genus large in its own country. These species are supposed to resemble each other in unequal degrees, as is so generally the case in nature, and as is represented in the diagram by the letters standing at unequal distances. I have said a large genus because we have seen in the second chapter that on an average more of the species of large genera vary than of small genera and the varying species of the large genera present a greater number of varieties. We have also seen that the species which are the commonest and the most widely diffused vary more than rare species with restricted ranges. Let A be a common, widely diffused and varying species belonging to a genus large in its own country. The little fan of diverging dotted lines of unequal lengths proceeding from A may represent its varying offspring. The variations are supposed to be extremely slight, but of the most diversified nature. They are not supposed all to appear simultaneously, but often after long intervals of time. Nor are they all supposed to endure for equal periods Only those variations which are in some way profitable will be preserved or naturally selected And here the importance of the principle of benefit being derived from divergence of character comes in For this will generally lead to the most different or divergent variations represented by the outer dotted lines being preserved and accumulated by natural selection. When a dotted line reaches one of the horizontal lines and is there marked by a small numbered letter a sufficient amount of variation is supposed to have been accumulated to have formed a fairly well variety such as would be thought worthy of record in a systematic work The intervals between the horizontal lines in the diagram may represent each a thousand generations, but it would have been better if each had represented ten thousand generations. After a thousand generations, species A is supposed to have produced two fairly well-marked varieties, namely A1 and M1. These two varieties will generally continue to be exposed to the same conditions which made their parents variable. And the tendency to variability is in itself hereditary. Consequently, they will tend to vary, and generally to vary in nearly the same manner as their parents varied. Moreover, these two varieties, being only slightly modified forms, will tend to inherit those advantages which made their common parent A more numerous than most of the other inhabitants of the same country. They will likewise partake of those more general advantages which made the genus to which the parent species belonged a large genus in its own country. And these circumstances we know to be favorable to the production of new varieties. If then these two varieties be variable, the most divergent of their variations will generally be preserved during the next thousand generations. And after this interval, variety A1 is supposed in the diagram to have produced variety A2, which will, owing to the principle of divergence, differ more from A than did variety A1. Variety M1 is supposed to have produced two varieties, namely M2 and S2, differing from each other and more considerably from their common parent A. We may continue the process by similar steps for any length of time. some of the varieties, each after thousand generations, producing only a single variety, but in a more and more modified condition, some producing two or three varieties, and some failing to produce any. Thus the varieties or modified descendants proceeding from the common parent A will generally go on increasing in number and diverging in character. In the diagram, the process is represented up to the 10,000th generation and under a condensed and simplified form up to the 14,000th generation. But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made somewhat irregular. I am far from thinking that the most divergent varieties will invariably prevail and multiply. A medium form may often long endure, and may or may not produce more than one modified descendant. For natural selection will always act according to the nature of the places, which are either unoccupied or not perfectly occupied by other beings. And this will depend on infinitely complex relations. But as a general rule, the more diversified in structure the descendants from any one species can be rendered, the more places they will be enabled to seize on, and the more their modified progeny will be increased. In our diagram, the line of succession is broken at regular intervals by small numbered letters, marking the successive forms which have become sufficiently distinct to be recorded as varieties. But these breaks are imaginary and might have been inserted anywhere, after intervals long enough to have allowed the accumulation of a considerable amount of divergent variation. As all the modified descendants from a common and widely diffused species belonging to a large genus will tend to partake of the same advantages which made their parents successful in life, they will generally go on multiplying in number as well as diverging in character. This is represented in the diagram by the several divergent branches proceeding from A. The modified offspring from the later and more highly improved branches in the lines of descent will, it is probable, often take the place of, and so destroy, the earlier and less improved branches. This is represented in the diagram by some of the lower branches not reaching to the upper horizontal lines. In some cases I do not doubt that the process of modification will be confined to a single line of descent, and the number of the descendants will not be increased, although the amount of divergent modification may have been increased in the successive generations. This case would be represented in the diagram if all the lines proceeding from A were removed, except that from A1 to A10. In the same way, for instance, the English racehorse and English pointer have apparently both gone on slowly diverging in character from their original stocks without either having given off any fresh branches or races. After 10,000 generations, species A is supposed to have produced three forms, A10, F10, and M10, which from having diverged in character during the successive generations will have come to differ largely, but perhaps unequally, from each other and from their common parent. If we suppose the amount of change between each horizontal line in our diagram to be excessively small, these three forms may still be only well-marked varieties, or they may have arrived at the doubtful category of subspecies. But we have only to suppose the steps in the process of modification, to be more numerous or greater in amount, to convert these three forms into well-defined species. Thus the diagram illustrates the steps by which the small differences distinguishing varieties are increased into the larger differences distinguishing species. By continuing the same process for a greater number of generations, as shown in the diagram, in a condensed and simplified manner, we get eight species, marked by the letters between A14 and M14, all descended from A. Thus, as I believe, species are multiplied and genera are formed. In a large genus, it is probable that more than one species would vary. In the diagram, I have assumed that a second species, I, has produced by analogous steps. After 10,000 generations, are there two well-marked varieties, W10 and Z10? or two species, according to the amount of change supposed to be represented between the horizontal lines. After 14,000 generations, six new species, marked by the letters N14 to Z14, are supposed to have been produced. In each genus, the species, which are already extremely different in character, will generally tend to produce the greatest number of modified descendants, for these will have the best chance of filling new and widely different places in the polity of nature. Hence in the diagram, I have chosen the extreme species A and the nearly extreme species I as those which have largely varied and have given rise to new varieties and species. The other nine species marked by capital letters of our original genus may for a long period continue transmitting unaltered descendants, and this is shown in the diagram by the dotted lines not prolonged far upwards from want of space. But during the process of modification, represented in the diagram, another of our principles, namely that of extinction, will have played an important part. As in each fully stocked country, natural selection necessarily acts by the selected form having some advantage in the struggle for life over other forms. There will be a constant tendency in the improved descendants of any one species to supplant and exterminate in each stage of descent their predecessors and their original parent. For it should be remembered that the competition will generally be most severe between those forms, which are most nearly related to each other in habits, constitution, and structure. Hence all the intermediate forms between the earlier and later states That is, between the less and more improved state of a species As well as the original parent species itself Will generally tend to become extinct So it probably will be with many whole collateral lines of descent Which will be conquered by later and improved lines of descent If, however, the modified offspring of a species get into some distinct country, or become quickly adapted to some quite new station, in which child and parent do not come into competition, both may continue to exist. If then our diagram be assumed to represent a considerable amount of modification, species A and all the earlier varieties will have become extinct having been replaced by eight new species A14 to M14 and I will have been replaced by six N14 to Z14 new species The original species of our genus were supposed to resemble each other in unequal degrees, as is so generally the case in nature. Species A being more nearly related to B, C, and D than to the other species. And species I more to G, H, K, L than to the others. These two species A and I were also supposed to be very common and widely diffused species, so that they must originally have had some advantage over most of the other species of the genus. Their modified descendants, 14 in number at the 14,000th generation, will probably have inherited some of the same advantages. They have also been modified and improved in a diversified manner at each stage of descent, so as to have become adapted to many related places in the natural economy of their country. It seems therefore to me extremely probable that they will have taken the places of, and thus exterminated, not only their parents A and I, but likewise some of the original species which were most nearly related to their parents. Hence very few of the original species will have transmitted offspring to the 14,000th generation. We may suppose that only one, F, of the two species which were least closely related to the other nine original species has transmitted descendants to this late stage of descent. The new species in our diagram, descended from the original 11 species, will now be 15 in number. Owing to the divergent tendency of natural selection, the extreme amount of difference in character between species A14 and Z14 will be much greater than that between the most different of the original 11 species. The new species, moreover, will be allied to each other in a widely different manner. Of the eight descendants from A, the three marked A14, Q14, P14 will be nearly related from having recently branched off from A10. B14 and F14, from having diverged at an earlier period from A5, will be in some degree distinct from the three first-named species. and lastly O14, E14, and M14 will be nearly related one to the other but from having diverged at the first commencement of the process of modification will be widely different from the other five species and may constitute a subgenus or even a distinct genus. The six descendants from I will form two subgenera or even genera, but as the original species I differed largely from A, standing nearly at the extreme points of the original genus, the six descendants from I, while owing to inheritance, differ considerably from the eight descendants from A. The two groups, moreover, are supposed to have gone on diverging in different directions. The intermediate species also, and this is a very important consideration, which connected the original species A and I, have all become, excepting F, extinct, and have left no descendants. Hence the six new species descended from I and the eight descended from A will have to be ranked as very distinct genera or even as distinct subfamilies. Thus it is as I believe that two or more genera are produced by descent with modification from two or more species of the same genus and the two or more parent species are supposed to have descended from some one species of an earlier genus. In our diagram, this is indicated by the broken lines beneath the capital letters, converging in sub-branches downwards towards a single point, this point representing a single species, the supposed single parent of our several new sub-genera, and genera. It is worthwhile to reflect for a moment on the character of the new species F-14, which is supposed not to have diverged much in character, but to have retained the form of F, either unaltered or altered only in a slight degree. In this case, its affinities to the other 14 new species will be of a curious and circadian Having descended from a form which stood between the two parent species A and I, now supposed to be extinct and unknown, it will be in some degree intermediate in character between the two groups descended from these species. But as these two groups have gone on diverging in character from the type of their parents, The new species, F14, will not be directly intermediate between them, but rather between types of the two groups, and every naturalist will be able to bring some such case before his mind. In the diagram, each horizontal line has hitherto been supposed to represent a thousand generations, but each may represent a million or hundred million generations, and likewise a section of the successive strata of the Earth's crust, including extinct remains. We shall, when we come to our chapter on geology, have to refer again to this subject, and I think we shall then see that the diagram throws light on the affinities of extinct beings, which though generally belonging to the same orders or families or genera with those now living, yet are often in some degree intermediate in character between existing groups. And we can understand this fact, for the extinct species lived at very ancient epochs, when the branching lines of descent had diverged less. I see no reason to limit the process of modification as now explained to the formation of genera alone. If in our diagram we suppose the amount of change represented by each successive group of diverging dotted lines to be very great, the forms marked A14 to P14 and those marked B14 and F14 and those marked O14 to M14 will form three very distinct genera. We shall also have two very distinct genera descended from I, and as these latter two genera, both from continued divergence of character and from inheritance from a different parent, will differ widely from the three genera descended from A. The two little groups of genera will form two distinct families, or even orders, according to the amount of divergent modification supposed to be represented in the diagram. And the two new families or orders will have descended from two species of the original genus. and these two species are supposed to have descended from one species of a still more ancient and unknown genus. We have seen that in each country it is the species of the larger genera which oftenest present varieties or incipient species. This indeed might have been expected, for as natural selection acts through one form having some advantage over other forms in the struggle for existence, it will chiefly act on those which already have some advantage, and the largeness of any group shows that its species have inherited from a common ancestor some advantage in common. Hence the struggle for the production of new and modified descendants will mainly lie between the larger groups which are all trying to increase in number. One large group will slowly conquer another large group reduce its numbers and thus lessen its chance of further variation and improvement. Within the same large group the later and more highly perfected subgroups, from branching out and seizing on so many new places in the polity of nature, will constantly tend to supplant and destroy the earlier and less improved subgroups. Small and broken groups and subgroups will finally tend to disappear. looking to the future we can predict that the groups of organic beings which are now large and triumphant and which are least broken up that is which as yet have suffered least extinction will for a long period continue to increase but which groups will ultimately prevail no man can predict, for we well know that many groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become extinct. Looking still more remotely to the future, we may predict that owing to the continued and steady increase of the larger groups, a multitude of smaller groups will become utterly extinct, and leave no modified descendants, and consequently that of the species living at any one period, extremely few will transmit descendants to a remote futurity. I shall have to return to this subject in the chapter on classification but I may add that on this view of extremely few of the more ancient species having transmitted descendants and on the view of all the descendants of the same species making a class we can understand how it is that there exist but very few classes in each main division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Although extremely few of the most ancient species may now have living and modified descendants. Yet at the most remote geological period, the earth may have been as well peopled with many species of many genera, families, orders, and classes as at the present day. Summary of Chapter If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, Organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed. If there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed, than considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits to be advantageous to them. I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life. And from the strong principle of inheritance, they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation I have called, for the sake of brevity, natural selection. Natural selection on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages can modify the egg, seed, or young as easily as the adult. Amongst many animals, sexual selection will give its aid to ordinary selection, by assuring to the most vigorous and best adapted males the greatest number of offspring. Sexual selection will also give characters useful to the males alone in their struggles with other males. Whether natural selection has really thus acted in nature, in modifying and adapting the various forms of life to their several conditions and stations, must be judged up by the general tenor and balance of evidence given in the following chapters. But we already see how it entails extinction, and how largely extinction has acted in the world's history, geology plainly declares. Natural selection also leads to divergence of character, For more living beings can be supported on the same area, the more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution, of which we see proof by looking at the inhabitants of any small spot or at naturalized productions. Therefore, during the modification of the descendants of any one species, and during the incessant struggle of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified these descendants become, the better will be their chance of succeeding in the battle of life. Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species will steadily tend to increase till they come to equal the greater differences between species of the same genus or even of distinct genera. We have seen that it is the common, the widely diffused, and widely ranging species belonging to the larger genera, which vary most. and these will tend to transmit to their modified offspring that superiority which now makes them dominant in their own countries. Natural selection, as has just been remarked, leads to divergence of character and to much extinction of the less improved and intermediate forms of life. On these principles, I believe, the nature of the affinities of all organic beings may be explained. It is a truly wonderful fact, the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity, that all animals and all plants, throughout all time and space, should be related to each other in group subordinate to group, in the manner which we everywhere behold, namely, varieties of the same species most closely related together, species of the same genus less closely and unequally related together, forming sections and subgenera, species of distinct genera much less closely related, and genera related in different degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders, subclasses, and classes. The several subordinate groups in any class cannot be ranked in a single file, but seem rather to be clustered round points, and these round other points, and so on in almost endless cycles. On the view that each species has been independently created, I can see no explanation of this great fact in the classification of all organic beings. But to the best of my judgment, it is explained through inheritance and the complex action of natural selection, entailing extinction and divergence of character, as we have seen illustrated in the diagram. The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species, and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth, all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs. And this connection of the former and present buds, by ramifying branches, may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches. So with the species which lived during long past geological periods, very few now having living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off, and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera, which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin, straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favored and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the ornithorhynchus or lepidocerin, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great tree of life which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications. And with that profound insight, and the end of chapter four, I think we'll end this evening's reading from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin. Honestly, I wish this book was required reading in school. It lays things out so clearly. I think there'd be far fewer arguments if people just read the book. But I suppose that can be said for quite a few things. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read this work for yourself, as always, you'll find a link to a free e-book from Project Gutenberg in the show description. I'll also be posting that diagram that was so much discussed in this reading over on the Patreon page, just in case you're curious. If you'd like to connect, suggest a boring book you'd like to hear read, or request more from one we've already started, you can drop me an email via our website, www.boringbookspod.com. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining me for this evening's reading. Until our next boring book, goodnight.