Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
The opinions of Mr. Darwin have now been for many years before the world. His own book on ‘The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,’ unfolds and supports them with admirable clearness of argument. Far from being an abstruse and tedious work, it carries the reader o...
The opinions of Mr. Darwin have now been for many years before the world. His own book on ‘The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,’ unfolds and supports them with a...
2. Part 2And how is it that this wide, wide world does not supply food enough for all the vegetable forms that make an effort to live upon it? The answer to this curious question has lon...
3. Part 3The choice of food, the choice of habitation, the construction of dwelling-places for themselves or their offspring, methods of defence, methods of attack, are variously carried...
4. Part 4It might be asked how, with the supernatural knowledge requisite for collecting all the terrestrial animals of the globe, and the unique opportunity for observation afforded by...
5. Part 5Finally, we may ask, where are the traces of so tremendous and unparalleled a convulsion as one that could wrap the whole world in water, and hold all its dædal beauty for many...
6. Part 6It is curious that we should abuse the hen for being now and then deceived by our impostures, considering the immense quantities of counterfeit coin we ourselves accept as curre...
7. Part 7According to a principle now well known, the earlier the period of life the greater the resemblance is likely to be between creatures akin to one another. Hence we may explain t...
8. Part 8All around us in England, in Devonshire, in Torquay, and all over the globe, lie the memorials of human beings, of whose day and generation the oldest historical records we poss...
9. Part 9The same tale is told by the coal-measures. Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, has drawn out the argument from the carboniferous formation[57] with extraordinary force and a convincing pl...
10. Part 10Palæontology is defined as ‘the science which treats of fossil remains both animal and vegetable.’ This principle of the continuity of life from age to age may be considered as...
11. Part 11Sir,--One of your correspondents has pithily observed, that if he has denounced Darwinism, it is simply because he believes it to be untrue. Could you not, Sir, in the interests...
12. Part 12The array of figures brought forward to prove that the _Leptalis_ could not have made twenty steps of variation in the direction of the _Ithomia by chance_, would be much to the...
13. Part 13Brutes, man’s treatment of, 11, 90; opinion that God is the soul of, 71; compared with men, 74; their moral qualities, 75, 88; their laws and constitutions, 77; their perception...