The Development Theory: A Brief Statement for General Readers |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
50 cents algæ ancestors animal or plant animals animals and plants apes Archaeopteryx axolotl become beginning birds body Boston brain breed brine-shrimps carboniferous cause cell cenozoic changes color common condition continent creation Dana's Manual Darwin descent development theory dicotyledons domestic earth embryo Eohippus eozoic Europe evidence evolution example fact fauna feet female fishes flint flowering plants fossil genera genus geological age groups Haeckel HANDBOOK horse human hundred illustration insects instance islands kind known latter LEE & SHEPARD less life-history living lizards mals mammals Manual of Geology mesozoic microscopic natural selection naturalists Neanderthal O. C. Marsh organs Origin of Species period pollen produced Professor quoted rabbits races regard region reptiles resemblance result river-drift says seeds sexual shells silurian skull snails spores striking sub-kingdom teeth thing tion toes trees tropical variations varieties vary vegetable vertebrates Wallace wild species
Popular passages
Page 209 - America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of the continent. These facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species, — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home it occurred to me (in 1837) that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years I allowed myself to...
Page 206 - ... would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!11 Vegetable life he believes...
Page 6 - As from his lair the wild beast where he wons In" forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den...
Page 6 - The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts ; then springs, as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane : the ounce, The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks...
Page 209 - After five years' work, I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes : these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable. From that period to the present day...
Page 27 - On the evidence of palaeontology, the evolution of many existing forms of animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but an historical fact ; it is only the nature of the physiological factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to discussion.
Page 204 - Naturforscher,' von Dr. Karl Meding, s. 34) that the future question for naturalists will be how, for instance, cattle got their horns, and not fur what they are used. It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, Dr. Darwin in England, and Geoffroy...