Evolution, Old and New, Or, The Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, as Compared with that of Charles DarwinA.C. Fifield, 1911 - 430 pages |
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Evolution, Old & New Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and ... Butler Samuel No preview available - 2016 |
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action admit animals animals and plants appear become beetles believe birds body brain breeds Buffon called cause chapter Charles Darwin circumstances climate common conditions of existence consequence continues Creation creature Darwin and Lamarck descent with modification disuse doctrine domestication edition effect Erasmus Darwin evolution eyes fact feel fittest forms G. H. Lewes Geoffroy St greater habits hence Hilaire horse Ibid ideas individuals insects insisted instinct irritability Isidore Geoffroy kind Lamarck less Lichfield living filament manner matter means of modification mind mutability of species natural selection nerves observed offspring opinion organs Origin of Species parents passage perception Phil Philosophie Zoologique produced Professor Haeckel purpose quadrupeds race reader resemblance Rome rudimentary sensation sense structure suppose survival teleology theory of descent things tion unconscious variation varieties vegetable Vestiges of Creation wings words writes Zool Zoonomia
Popular passages
Page 247 - Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us.
Page 6 - For this reason, and for no other, viz., that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, eg that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day...
Page 160 - ... would it be too bold to imagine that all warmblooded 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?
Page 223 - ... any existing species — animal or vegetable — when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes of structure fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue, until ultimately the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place.
Page 6 - But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always been there.
Page 159 - ... would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...
Page 250 - ... the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, combined probably with disuse. For during many successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea...
Page 6 - ... the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker ; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer ; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.
Page 6 - ... different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result : — We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box.
Page 51 - abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three, " but the greatest of these is charity.