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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: embryological characters are the most valuable of all. The real affinities
of all organic beings are due to inheritance or community of descent. The
natural system is a genealogical arrangement, in which we have to discover
the lines of descent by the most permanent characters, however slight their
vital importance may be.
The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a bat,
fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse,--the same number of vertebrae
forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant,--and innumerable other
such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow
and slight successive modifications. The similarity of pattern in the wing
and leg of a bat, though used for such different purpose,--in the jaws and
On the Origin of Species |
