Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Thomas Henry Huxley
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    469/496 page 455
    is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same Class, Mam- media; men and apes as members of the same Order, Primates ; and if there were any animals more like men than they were like any of the apes, and yet different from men in important and constant particulars of their organisation, we should rank them as members of the same Family, or of the same Genus, but as of distinct Species. That it is possible to arrange all the varied forms of animals into gixraps, having this sort of singular subordination one to the other, is a very remarkable circumstance; but, as Mr. Darwin re- marks, this is a result which is quite to be ex- pected, if the principles which he lays down be correct. Take the case of the races which are known to be produced by the operation of atavism and variability, and the conditions of existence which check and modify these tendencies. Take the case of the pigeons that I brought before you : there it was shown that they might be all classed as belonging to some one of five principal divi- sions, and that within these divisions other sub- ordinate groups might be formed. The members of these groups are related to one another in just the same way as the genera of a family, and the groups themselves as the families of an order, or the orders of a class ; while all have the same sort of structural relations with the wild rock-pigeon,
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3