Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > Darwin > Status Update

"The inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America...it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely to receive colonists from America, whether by occasional means of transport...and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; such colonists would be liable to modification - the principle of inheritance still betraying their original birthplace.

"...when the warmth had fully returned, the same species, which had lately lived together on the European and North American lowlands, would again be found in the arctic regions of the Old and New Worlds, and on many isolated mountain summits far distant from each other" (189).

"If the existence of the same species at distant & isolated points of the earth's surface, can...be explained on the view of each species having migrated from a single birthplace; then, considering our ignorance with respect to former climatal & geographical changes and to the various occasional means of transport, the belief that a single birthplace is the law, seems to me incomparably the safest" (184).

"As the accumulation of each formation has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as I attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or in any two formations, all the intermediate varieties between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of those periods..." (176).

"The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new variety and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition; and the consequent extinction of the less-favoured forms almost inevitably follows. It is the same with our domestic productions..." (170).

"...I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory" (161-2).

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record" (152).

"...from these several considerations we may conclude that fertility does not constitute a fundamental distinction between varieties and species when crossed" (149).

Darwin's definition of "species" is in direct contradiction with modern science's definition. How he can be believed as the expert on "The Origin of Species" is beyond me.

"The fertility of varieties, that is of the forms known or believed to be descended from common parents, when crossed, and likewise the fertility of their mongrel offspring, is, with reference to my theory, of equal importance with the sterility of species; for it seems to make a broad and clear distinction between varieties and species" (136).

"Hence we may conclude that slight modifications of structure or of instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, have proved advantageous: consequently the fertile males and females have flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members with the same modification" (133).