The Factors of Organic Evolution. Spencer Herbert

and though it is a feasible hypothesis that an effect of this kind persistently produced may be inherited; yet no such cause can explain the carapace of the turtle, the armour of the armadillo, or the imbricated covering of the manis. The skins of these animals are no more exposed to habitual hard usage than are those of animals covered by hair. The strange excrescences which distinguish the heads of the hornbills, cannot possibly have arisen from any reaction against the action of surrounding forces; for even were they clearly protective, there is no reason to suppose that the heads of these birds need protection more than the heads of other birds. If, led by the evidence that in animals the amount of covering is in some cases affected by the degree of exposure, it were admitted as imaginable that the development of feathers from preceding dermal growths had resulted from that extra nutrition caused by extra superficial circulation, we should still be without explanation of the structure of a feather. Nor should we have any clue to the specialities of feathers – the crests of various birds, the tails sometimes so enormous, the curiously placed plumes of the bird of paradise, &c., &c. Still more obviously impossible is it to explain as due to use or disuse the colours of animals. No direct adaptation to function could have produced the blue protuberances on a mandril's face, or the striped hide of a tiger, or the gorgeous plumage of a kingfisher, or the eyes in a peacock's tail, or the multitudinous patterns of insects' wings. One single case, that of a deer's horns, might alone have sufficed to show how insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's horns are not used at all; and when, having been cleared of the dead skin and dried-up blood-vessels covering them, they are ready for use, they are nerveless and non-vascular, and hence are incapable of undergoing any changes of structure consequent on changes of function.

      Of these few then, who rejected the belief described by Professor Huxley, and who, espousing the belief in a continuous evolution, had to account for this evolution, it must be said that though the cause assigned was a true cause, yet, even admitting that it operated through successive generations, it left unexplained the greater part of the facts. Having been myself one of these few, I look back with surprise at the way in which the facts which were congruous with the espoused view monopolized consciousness and kept out the facts which were incongruous with it – conspicuous though many of them were. The misjudgment was not unnatural. Finding it impossible to accept any doctrine which implied a breach in the uniform course of natural causation, and, by implication, accepting as unquestionable the origin and development of all organic forms by accumulated modifications naturally caused, that which appeared to explain certain classes of these modifications, was supposed to be capable of explaining the rest: the tendency being to assume that these would eventually be similarly accounted for, though it was not clear how.

      Returning from this parenthetic remark, we are concerned here chiefly to remember that, as said at the outset, there existed thirty years ago, no tenable theory about the genesis of living things. Of the two alternative beliefs, neither would bear critical examination.

      Out of this dead lock we were released – in large measure, though not I believe entirely – by the Origin of Species. That work brought into view a further factor; or rather, such factor, recognized as in operation by here and there an observer (as pointed out by Mr. Darwin in his introduction to the second edition), was by him for the first time seen to have played so immense a part in the genesis of plants and animals.

      Though laying myself open to the charge of telling a thrice-told tale, I feel obliged here to indicate briefly the several great classes of facts which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis explains; because otherwise that which follows would scarcely be understood. And I feel the less hesitation in doing this because the hypothesis which it replaced, not very widely known at any time, has of late so completely dropped into the background, that the majority of readers are scarcely aware of its existence, and do not therefore understand the relation between Mr. Darwin's successful interpretation and the preceding unsuccessful attempt at interpretation. Of these classes of facts, four chief ones may be here distinguished.

      In the first place, such adjustments as those exemplified above are made comprehensible. Though it is inconceivable that a structure like that of the pitcher-plant could have been produced by accumulated effects of function on structure; yet it is conceivable that successive selections of favourable variations might have produced it; and the like holds of the no less remarkable appliance of the Venus's Fly-trap, or the still more astonishing one of that water-plant by which infant-fish are captured. Though it is impossible to imagine how, by direct influence of increased use, such dermal appendages as a porcupine's quills could have been developed; yet, profiting as the members of a species otherwise defenceless might do by the stiffness of their hairs, rendering them unpleasant morsels to eat, it is a feasible supposition that from successive survivals of individuals thus defended in the greatest degrees, and the consequent growth in successive generations of hairs into bristles, bristles into spines, spines into quills (for all these are homologous), this change could have arisen. In like manner, the odd inflatable bag of the bladder-nosed seal, the curious fishing-rod with its worm-like appendage carried on the head of the lophius or angler, the spurs on the wings of certain birds, the weapons of the sword-fish and saw-fish, the wattles of fowls, and numberless such peculiar structures, though by no possibility explicable as due to effects of use or disuse, are explicable as resulting from natural selection operating in one or other way.

      In the second place, while showing us how there have arisen countless modifications in the forms, structures, and colours of each part, Mr. Darwin has shown us how, by the establishment of favourable variations, there may arise new parts. Though the first step in the production of horns on the heads of various herbivorous animals, may have been the growth of callosities consequent on the habit of butting – such callosities thus functionally initiated being afterwards developed in the most advantageous ways by selection; yet no explanation can be thus given of the sudden appearance of a duplicate set of horns, as occasionally happens in sheep: an addition which, where it proved beneficial, might readily be made a permanent trait by natural selection. Again, the modifications which follow use and disuse can by no possibility account for changes in the numbers of vertebræ; but after recognizing spontaneous, or rather fortuitous, variation as a factor, we can see that where an additional vertebra hence resulting (as in some pigeons) proves beneficial, survival of the fittest may make it a constant character; and there may, by further like additions, be produced extremely long strings of vertebræ, such as snakes show us. Similarly with the mammary glands. It is not an unreasonable supposition that by the effects of greater or less function, inherited through successive generations, these may be enlarged or diminished in size; but it is out of the question to allege such a cause for changes in their numbers. There is no imaginable explanation of these save the establishment by inheritance of spontaneous variations, such as are known to occur in the human race.

      So too, in the third place, with certain alterations in the connections of parts. According to the greater or smaller demands made on this or that limb, the muscles moving it may be augmented or diminished in bulk; and, if there is inheritance of changes so wrought, the limb may, in course of generations, be rendered larger or smaller. But changes in the arrangements or attachments of muscles cannot be thus accounted for. It is found, especially at the extremities, that the relations of tendons to bones and to one another are not always the same. Variations in their modes of connection may occasionally prove advantageous, and may thus become established. Here again, then, we have a class of structural changes to which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis gives us the key, and to which there is no other key.

      Once more there are the phenomena of mimicry. Perhaps in a more striking way than any others, these show how traits which seem inexplicable are explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have varied in favorable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvelous simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which “resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;” those of caterpillars which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And we are shown how there have arisen still more astonishing imitations – those of one insect by another. As Mr. Bates has proved, there are cases in which a species of butterfly, rendered so unpalatable to insectivorous birds by its disagreeable taste that they will not catch it, is simulated in its colors and markings by a species which is structurally quite different – so simulated that even a practiced entomologist is liable to be deceived: the explanation being that an original slight resemblance, leading to occasional