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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: their parts, not only in this but, as I apprehend, in every natural family,
is very unequal, and in some cases seems to be entirely lost.' Again in
another work he says, the genera of the Connaraceae 'differ in having one
or more ovaria, in the existence or absence of albumen, in the imbricate or
valvular aestivation. Any one of these characters singly is frequently of
more than generic importance, though here even when all taken together they
appear insufficient to separate Cnestis from Connarus.' To give an example
amongst insects, in one great division of the Hymenoptera, the antennae, as
Westwood has remarked, are most constant in structure; in another division
they differ much, and the differences are of quite subordinate value in
classification; yet no one probably will say that the antennae in these two
On the Origin of Species |
