Species Quotes

Not the stars, not the farthest solar systems, not the millions of different species of animal life, but the child is the greatest of God's creations.

Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance, for they determine the present welfare, and, as I believe, the future success and modification of every inhabitant of this world.

When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in countries anciently civilised.

Species that struggle to adapt to survive will become extinct.

Species of the same genus would occasionally exhibit reversions to lost ancestral characters.

When we descend to details we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.

Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.

That climate acts in main part indirectly by favouring other species, we clearly see in the prodigious number of plants which in our gardens can perfectly well endure our climate, but which never become naturalised, for they cannot compete with our native plants nor resist destruction by our native animals.

There is continuity between humans and other animals in their emotional lives; there are transitional stages among species, not large gaps; and the differences among many animals are differences in degree rather than in kind

Though nature grants vast periods of time for the work of natural selection, she does not grant an indefinite period; for as all organic beings are striving, it may be said, to seize on each place in the economy of nature, if any one species does not become modified and improved in a corresponding degree with its competitors, it will soon be exterminated.

We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some slight physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants will almost immediately undergo a change, and some species will probably become extinct.

All that at present can be said with certainty, is that, as with the individual, so with the species, the hour of life has run its course, ans is spent.

It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me.

I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained-namely, that each species has been independently created-is erroneous.

We here see in two distant countries a similar relation between plants and insects of the same families, though the species of both are different. When man is the agent in introducing into a country a new species this relation is often broken

Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species.

Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.