All the Year Round, Volume 3

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Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens, 1860

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Page 175 - England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great...
Page 300 - That no will shall be valid unless it shall be in writing and executed in manner hereinafter mentioned ; (that is to say), it shall be signed at the foot or end thereof by the testator, or by some other person in his presence and by his direction...
Page 293 - ... there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage.
Page 139 - Solomon to look at the industry of the ant, and we are taught also to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove.
Page 293 - There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pak.
Page 292 - As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Page 199 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Page 175 - We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight but useful variations given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts as the works of Nature are to those of Art.
Page 290 - Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.
Page 290 - Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences.

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