Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/103

III naturalists of the old school, and all mere collectors, were interested in species in proportion to their rarity, and would often have in their collections a larger number of specimens of a rare species than of a species that was very common. Now as these rare species do really vary much less than the common species, and in many cases hardly vary at all, it was very natural that a belief in the fixity of species should prevail. It is not, however, as we shall see presently, the rare, but the common and widespread species which become the parents of new forms, and thus the non-variability of any number of rare or local species offers no difficulty whatever in the way of the theory of evolution.

We have now shown in some detail, at the risk of being tedious, that individual variability is a general character of all common and widespread species of animals or plants; and, further, that this variability extends, so far as we know, to every part and organ, whether external or internal, as well as to every mental faculty. Yet more important is the fact that each part or organ varies to a considerable extent independently of other parts. Again, we have shown, by abundant evidence, that the variation that occurs is very large in amount—usually reaching 10 or 20, and sometimes even 25 per cent of the average size of the varying part; while not one or two only, but from 5 to 10 per cent of the specimens examined exhibit nearly as large an amount of variation. These facts have been brought clearly before the reader by means of numerous diagrams, drawn to scale and exhibiting the actual variations in inches, so that there can be no possibility of denying either their generality or their amount. The importance of this full exposition of the subject will be seen in future chapters, when we shall frequently have to refer to the facts here set forth, especially when we deal with the various theories of recent writers and the criticisms that have been made of the Darwinian theory.

A full exposition of the facts of variation among wild animals and plants is the more necessary, because comparatively few of them were published in Mr. Darwin's works, while the more important have only been made known since