Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/169

VI new species. This was the keynote of Mr. Vernon Wollaston's essay on "Variation of Species," published in 1856, and it is adopted by the Rev. J. G. Gulick in his paper on "Diversity of Evolution under one Set of External Conditions" (Journ. Linn. Soc. Zool., vol. xi. p. 496). The idea seems to be that there is an inherent tendency to variation in certain divergent lines, and that when one portion of a species is isolated, even though under identical conditions, that tendency sets up a divergence which carries that portion farther and farther away from the original species. This view is held to be supported by the case of the land shells of the Sandwich Islands, which certainly present some very remarkable phenomena. In this comparatively small area there are about 300 species of land shells, almost all of which belong to one family (or sub-family), the Achatinellidæ, found nowhere else in the world. The interesting point is the extreme restriction of the species and varieties. The average range of each species is only five or six miles, while some are restricted to but one or two square miles, and only a very few range over a whole island. The forest region that extends over one of the mountain-ranges of the island of Oahu, is about forty miles in length and five or six miles in breadth; and this small territory furnishes about 175 species, represented by 700 or 800 varieties. Mr. Gulick states, that the vegetation of the different valleys on the same side of this range is much the same, yet each has a molluscan fauna differing in some degree from that of any other. "We frequently find a genus represented in several successive valleys by allied species, sometimes feeding on the same, sometimes on different plants. In every such case the valleys that are nearest to each other furnish the most nearly allied forms; and a full set of the varieties of each species presents a minute gradation of forms between the more divergent types found in the more widely separated localities." He urges, that these constant differences cannot be attributed to natural selection, because they occur in different valleys on the same side of the mountain, where food, climate, and enemies are the same; and also, because there is no greater difference in passing from the rainy to the dry side of the mountains than in passing from one valley to