And this fact shows that a
character, which is generally of generic value, when it sinks in value
and becomes only of specific value, often becomes variable, though its
physiological importance may remain the same. Something of the same
kind applies to monstrosities: at least Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire seems
to entertain no doubt, that the more an organ normally differs in the
different species of the same group, the more subject it is to
individual anomalies.
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently
created, why should that part of the structure, which differs from the
same part in other independently-created species of the same genus, be
more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several
species? I do not see that any explanation can be given. But on the
view of species being only strongly marked and fixed varieties, we
might surely expect to find them still often continuing to vary in
those parts of their structure which have varied within a moderately
recent period, and which have thus come to differ. Or to state the
case in another manner:--the points in which all the species of a
genus resemble each other, and in which they differ from the species
of some other genus, are called generic characters; and these
characters in common I attribute to inheritance from a common
progenitor, for it can rarely have happened that natural selection
will have modified several species, fitted to more or less
widely-different habits, in exactly the same manner: and as these
so-called generic characters have been inherited from a remote period,
since that period when the species first branched off from their
common progenitor, and subsequently have not varied or come to differ
in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not probable that
they should vary at the present day.
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