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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: are far from meaning that during a long course of descent, primordial
organs of any kind--vertebrae in the one case and legs in the other--have
actually been modified into skulls or jaws. Yet so strong is the
appearance of a modification of this nature having occurred, that
naturalists can hardly avoid employing language having this plain
signification. On my view these terms may be used literally; and the
wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab retaining numerous
characters, which they would probably have retained through inheritance, if
they had really been metamorphosed during a long course of descent from
true legs, or from some simple appendage, is explained.
Embryology. -- It has already been casually remarked that certain organs in
On the Origin of Species |
