Evolution and Animal Life: An Elementary Discussion of Facts, Processes, Laws and Theories Relating to the Life and Evolution of AnimalsD. Appleton, 1907 - 489 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
actual adaptation adult animals animals and plants ants apes appear artificial selection bees beetles biological biologists birds body breeding butterfly called causes centrosome changes CHAPTER characters chromatin chromosomes color and pattern common crab Darwin degeneration degree descent differentiation division egg cell embryo environment existence fact factors fauna female fertilized fishes forms fossils gastrula genus germ cells habit hatched heredity host hybrid individuals influence inheritance insects instinct islands isolation kinds of animals known larva larvæ live lower male mammals matter ment modified mutations natural selection naturalists nest nucleus offspring organic evolution origin Origin of Species parasites parent phenomena plasm primitive produced protoplasm Protozoa race relation reproduction resemblance Sacculina sea anemone sexual sexual selection sheep simple species species-forming sperm spines stage structure substance tail theory tion traits tree variation various vertebrates Weismann wings workers worm young
Popular passages
Page 469 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Page 138 - Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound. Not in one case out of a hundred can we pretend to assign any reason why this or that part differs, more or less, from the same part in the parents.
Page 469 - To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.
Page 26 - ... x's and y's with which he works his problems, for real entities — and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
Page 121 - Given any species in any region, the nearest related species is not likely to be found in the same region nor in a remote region, but in a neighboring district separated from the first by a barrier of some sort, or at least by a belt of country, the breadth of which gives the effect of a barrier.
Page 312 - There are twenty-six land birds. Of these twenty-one, or perhaps twenty-three, are ranked as distinct species, and would commonly be assumed to have been here created; yet the close affinity of most of these birds to American species is manifest in every character in their habits, gestures and tones of voice.
Page 458 - Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result — that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.
Page 64 - Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes that "more than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England.
Page 64 - Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district...