Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Contents
- I On the Law which has regulated the introduction of New Species
- II On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type
- III Mimicry, and other Protective Resemblances among Animals
- IV The Malayan Papilionidœ, or Swallow-tailed Butterflies, as illustrative of the Theory of Natural Selection
- V On Instinct in Man and Animals
- VI The Philosophy of Birds' Nests
- VII A Theory of Birds' Nests; showing the relation of certain differences of colour in female birds to their mode of nidification
- VIII Creation by Law
- IX The Development of Human Races under the Law of Natural Selection
- X The Limits of Natural Selection as applied to Man
- NOTES
- INDEX
I - On the Law which has regulated the introduction of New Species
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Contents
- I On the Law which has regulated the introduction of New Species
- II On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type
- III Mimicry, and other Protective Resemblances among Animals
- IV The Malayan Papilionidœ, or Swallow-tailed Butterflies, as illustrative of the Theory of Natural Selection
- V On Instinct in Man and Animals
- VI The Philosophy of Birds' Nests
- VII A Theory of Birds' Nests; showing the relation of certain differences of colour in female birds to their mode of nidification
- VIII Creation by Law
- IX The Development of Human Races under the Law of Natural Selection
- X The Limits of Natural Selection as applied to Man
- NOTES
- INDEX
Summary
Geographical Distribution dependent on Geologic Changes.
Every naturalist who has directed his attention to the subject of the geographical distribution of animals and plants, must have been interested in the singular facts which it presents. Many of these facts are quite different from what would have been anticipated, and have hitherto been considered as highly curious, but quite inexplicable. None of the explanations attempted from the time of Linnæus are now considered at all satisfactory; none of them have given a cause sufficient to account for the facts known at the time, or comprehensive enough to include all the new facts which have since been, and are daily being added. Of late years, however, a great light has been thrown upon the subject by geological investigations, which have shown that the present state of the earth and of the organisms now inhabiting it, is but the last stage of a long and uninterrupted series of changes which it has undergone, and consequently, that to endeavour to explain and account for its present condition without any reference to those changes (as has frequently been done) must lead to very imperfect and erroneous conclusions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Contributions to the Theory of Natural SelectionA Series of Essays, pp. 1 - 25Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1870