Natural Selection and Tropical Nature: Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical BiologyMacmillan and Company, 1895 - 492 pages |
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abundant adapted allied species America animals ants appear bamboo Batavia beautiful become bees beetles birds branches brilliant butterflies caterpillars causes chaffinches character civilised climate colour Colours of Animals concealed conspicuous curious Darwin distinct earth equatorial zone evidence exactly existence extinct facts families favourable feet female fertilised flowers foliage forests genera genus geological gravel green groups habits Heliconidæ humming-birds imitation important inhabit insects instinct islands kind larvæ laws leaves less Malay Archipelago male mammalia mimicry mode modified moths natural selection naturalists nectary nest observed occur organic organisation origin Origin of Species ornaments Papilio peculiar perhaps phenomena pigeons plants Pliocene plumage probably produced protection race remarkable render resemble savage sexes sexual selection sometimes South South America spots structure sun-birds surface tail temperate theory tints tion trees tropical variation varied variety vegetation whole wings yellow
Popular passages
Page 418 - a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage." The latter are still more remarkable, being unusually large and well-formed. Dr. Pruner-Bey states that they surpass the average of modern European skulls
Page 454 - American animals, as are those of the cave-deposits of Australia to the marsupials of that country ; and he thereon remarks : " This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts.
Page 217 - Observations made at the Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Batavia. Published by order of the Government of Netherlands, India. Vol. I. Meteorological, from Jan. 1866 to Dec. 1868 ; and Magnetical, from July 1867 to June 1870. By Dr. PA Bergsma, Batavia, 1871." This fine work is entirely in English.
Page 179 - could remain unchanged and live, amid the universal change around it. At length, however, there came into existence a being in whom that subtle force we term mind, became of greater importance than his mere bodily structure. Though with a naked and unprotected body, this gave him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to
Page 27 - existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial ; they are subject to variations which never occur, and never can occur, in a state of nature : their very existence depends altogether on human
Page 192 - The brain of prehistoric and of savage man seems to me to prove the existence of some power distinct from that which has guided the development of the lower animals through their ever-varying forms of being. The Use of the Hairy Covering of Mammalia Let us now consider another point in man's
Page 274 - register themselves thereon. And as the laws of Nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole organic world ; therefore the study of butterflies—creatures selected as the types of airiness and frivolity—instead of being despised, will
Page 27 - in a state of domesticity. Our quickly fattening pigs, short-legged sheep, pouter pigeons, and poodle dogs could never have come into existence in a state of nature, because the very first steps towards such inferior forms would have led to the rapid extinction of the race ; still less could they now exist in competition with their wild allies.
Page 363 - Thus—" the hump on the male zebu cattle of India, the tail of fat-tailed rams, the arched outline of the forehead in the males of several breeds of sheep, and the mane, the long hairs on the hind legs, and the dewlap of the male of the Berbura
Page 174 - would occur which has raised the very lowest races of man so far above the brutes (although differing so little from some of them in physical structure), and, in conjunction with scarcely perceptible modifications of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the European races.