The many slight differences which appear in the offspring from the same parents, or which it may be presumed have thus arisen, from being observed in the individuals of the same species inhabiting the same confined locality, may be called individual differences.
No one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the same actual mould.
These individual differences are of the highest importance for us, for they are often inherited, as must be familiar to every one; and they thus afford materials for natural selection to act on and accumulate, in the same manner as man accumulates in any given direction individual differences in his domesticated productions.
These individual differences generally affect what naturalists consider unimportant parts; but I could show by a long catalogue of facts, that parts which must be called important, whether viewed under a physiological or classificatory point of view, sometimes vary in the individuals of the same species.
I am convinced that the most experienced naturalist would be surprised at the number of the cases of variability, even in important parts of structure, which he could collect on good authority, as I have collected, during a course of years.
It should be remembered that systematists are far from being pleased at finding variability in important characters, and that there are not many men who will laboriously examine internal and important organs, and compare them in many specimens of the same species.
It would never have been expected that the branching of the main nerves close to the great central
ganglion of an insect would have been variable in the same species; it might have been thought that changes of this nature could have been effected only by slow degrees; yet Sir J. Lubbock has shown a degree of variability in these main nerves in
Coccus, which may almost be compared to the irregular branching of a stem of a tree.
This philosophical naturalist, I may add, has also shown that the muscles in the larvae of certain insects are far from uniform.
Authors sometimes argue in a circle when they state that important organs never vary; for these same authors practically rank those parts as important (as some few naturalists have honestly confessed) which do not vary; and, under this point of view, no instance will ever be found of an important part varying; but under any other point of view many instances assuredly can be given.
There is one point connected with individual differences, which is extremely perplexing: I refer to those genera which have been called "protean" or "Polymorphic", in which the species present an inordinate amount of variation.
With respect to many of these forms, hardly two naturalists agree whether to rank them as species or as varieties.
We may instance Rubus, Rosa, and
Hieracium amongst plants, several genera of and of brachiopod shells.
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| Rubus |
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| Rosa |
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| sunflower (Hieracium) |
In most polymorphic genera some of the species have fixed and definite characters.
Genera which are polymorphic in one country seem to be, with a few exceptions, polymorphic in other countries, and likewise, judging from
brachiopod shells, at former periods of time.
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| Brachiopod Shells |
These facts are very perplexing, for they seem to show that this kind of variability is independent of the conditions of life.
I am inclined to suspect that we see, at least in some of these polymorphic genera, variations which are of no service or disservice to the species, and which consequently have not been seized on and rendered definite by natural selection as hereafter to be explained.
