04 - Natural Selection

04-11 - Divergence of Character

As has always been my practice, I have sought light on this head from our domestic productions.

We shall here find something analogous.

It will be admitted that the production of races so different as short-horn and Hereford cattle, race and cart horses, the several breeds of pigeons, &c., could never have been effected by the mere chance accumulation of similar variations during many successive generations.

Hereford Cow

Race Horse

In practice, a fancier is, for instance, struck by a pigeon having a slightly shorter beak; another fancier is struck by a pigeon having a rather longer beak; and on the acknowledged principle that "fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard, but like extremes," they both go on (as has actually occurred with the sub-breeds of the tumbler-pigeon) choosing and breeding from birds with longer and longer beaks, or with shorter and shorter beaks.

pigeon

Again, we may suppose that at an early period of history, the men of one nation or district required swifter horses, whilst those of another required stronger and bulkier horses.

Dray Horse

The early differences would be very slight; but, in the course of time from the continued selection of swifter horses in the one case, and of stronger ones in the other, the differences would become greater, and would be noted as forming two sub-breeds.

Ultimately, after the lapse of centuries, these sub-breeds would become converted into two well-established and distinct breeds.

As the differences became greater, the inferior animals with intermediate characters, being neither swift nor very strong, would not have been used for breeding, and will thus have tended to disappear.

Here, then, we see in man's productions the action of what may be called the principle of divergence, causing differences, at first barely appreciable, steadily to increase, and the breeds to diverge in character, both from each other and from their common parent.

04 - Natural Selection

04-11 - Divergence of Character

We can clearly discern this in the case of animals with simple habits.

Take the case of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the number that can be supported in any country has long ago arrived at its full average.

If its natural power of increase be allowed to act, it can succeed in increasing (the country not undergoing any change in conditions) only by its varying descendants seizing on places at present occupied by other animals: some of them, for instance, being enabled to feed on new kinds of prey, either dead or alive; some inhabiting new stations, climbing trees, frequenting water, and some perhaps becoming less carnivorous.

quadruped

carnivore

herbivore

The more diversified in habits and structure the descendants of our carnivorous animals become, the more places they will be enabled to occupy.

What applies to one animal will apply throughout all time to all animals- that is, if they vary- for otherwise natural selection can effect nothing.

So it will be with plants. It has been experimentally proved, that if a plot of ground be sown with one species of grass, and a similar plot be sown with several distinct genera of grasses, a greater number of plants and a greater weight of dry herbage can be raised in the latter than in the former case.

grass

The same has been found to hold good when one variety and several mixed varieties of wheat have been sown on equal spaces of ground.

wheat

Hence, if any one species of grass were to go on varying, and the varieties were continually selected which differed from each other in the same manner, though in a very slight degree, as do the distinct species and genera of grasses, a greater number of individual plants of this species, including its modified descendants, would succeed in living on the same piece of ground.

And we know that each species and each variety of grass is annually sowing almost countless seeds; and is thus striving, as it may be said, to the utmost to increase in number.

Consequently, in the course of many thousand generations, the most distinct varieties of any one species of grass would have the best chance of succeeding and of increasing in numbers, and thus of supplanting the less distinct varieties; and varieties, when rendered very distinct from each other, take the rank of species.

grass