Habit in producing constitutional
peculiarities, and use in strengthening, and disuse in weakening and
diminishing organs, appear in many cases to have been potent in their
effects. Homologous parts tend to vary in the same manner, and homologous
parts tend to cohere. Modifications in hard parts and in external parts
sometimes affect softer and internal parts. When one part is largely
developed, perhaps it tends to draw nourishment from the adjoining parts;
and every part of the structure which can be saved without detriment will
be saved. Changes of structure at an early age may affect parts
subsequently developed; and many cases of correlated variation, the nature
of which we are unable to understand, undoubtedly occur. Multiple parts
are variable in number and in structure, perhaps arising from such parts
not having been closely specialised for any particular function, so that
their modifications have not been closely checked by natural selection. It
follows probably from this same cause, that organic beings low in the scale
are more variable than those standing higher in the scale, and which have
their whole organisation more specialised. Rudimentary organs, from being
useless, are not regulated by natural selection, and hence are variable.
Specific characters--that is, the characters which have come to differ
since the several species of the same genus branched off from a common
parent--are more variable than generic characters, or those which have long
been inherited, and have not differed within this same period.
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