"It would lead to closest examination of hybridity and generation, causes of change in order to know what we have come from and to what we tend—to what circumstances favour crossing and what prevents it—this, and direct examination of direct passages of structure in species, might lead to laws of change, which would then be [the] main object of study, to guide our speculations."
The following two extracts have a similar interest; the second is especially interesting, as it contains the germ of concluding sentence of the 'Origin of Species': ('Origin of Species' (1st edition), page 490:— "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.")—
"Before the attraction of gravity discovered it might have been said it was as great a difficulty to account for the movement of all [planets] by one law, as to account for each separate one; so to say that all mammalia were born from one stock, and since distributed by such means as we can recognise, may be thought to explain nothing.
"Astronomers might formerly have said that God fore-ordered each planet to move in its particular destiny. In the same manner God orders each animal created with certain forms in certain countries, but how much more simple and sublime [a] power—let attraction act according to certain law, such are inevitable consequences—let animals be created, then by the fixed laws of generation, such will be their successors.
"Let the powers of transportal be such, and so will be the forms of one country to another—let geological changes go at such a rate, so will be the number and distribution of the species!!"
The three next extracts are of miscellaneous interest:—