Facts and Arguments for Darwin | Page 3

only important as safe starting points and supports, but were also of the highest value as inflexible barriers in a problem in which, from its very nature, fancy must freely unfold her wings.
When I thus began to study our Crustacea more closely from this new stand-point of the Darwinian theory,--when I attempted to bring their arrangements into the form of a geological tree, and to form some idea of the probable structure of their ancestors,--I speedily saw (as indeed I expected) that it would require years of preliminary work before the essential problem could be seriously handled. The extant systematic works generally laid more weight upon the characters separating the genera, families and orders, than upon those which unite the members of each group, and consequently often furnished but little employable material. But above all things a thorough knowledge of development was indispensable, and every one knows how imperfect is our present knowledge of this subject. The existing deficiencies were the more difficult to supply, because, as Van Beneden remarks with regard to the Decapoda, from the often incredible difference in the development of the most nearly allied forms, these must be separately studied--usually family by family, and frequently genus by genus--nay, sometimes, as in the case of Peneus, even species by species; and because these investigations, in themselves troublesome and tedious, often depend for their success upon a lucky chance.
But although the satisfactory completion of the "Genealogical tree of the Crustacea" appeared to be an undertaking for which the strength and life of an individual would hardly suffice, even under more favourable circumstances than could be presented by a distant island, far removed from the great market of scientific life, far from libraries and museums--nevertheless its practicability became daily less doubtful in my eyes, and fresh observations daily made me more favourably inclined towards the Darwinian theory.
In determining to state the arguments which I derived from the consideration of our Crustacea in favour of Darwin's views, and which (together with more general considerations and observations in other departments), essentially aided in making the correctness of those views seem more and more palpable to me, I am chiefly influenced by an expression of Darwin's: "Whoever," says he ('Origin of Species' page 482), "is led to believe that species are mutable, will do a good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction." To the desire expressed in these words I respond, for my own part, with the more pleasure, as this furnishes me with an opportunity of publicly giving expression in words to the thanks which I feel most deeply to be due from me to Darwin for the instructions and suggestions for which I am so deeply indebted to his book. Accordingly I throw this sand-grain with confidence into the scale against "the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed," without troubling myself as to whether the priests of orthodox science will reckon me amongst dreamers and children in knowledge of the laws of nature.
CHAPTER 2.
THE SPECIES OF MELITA.
A false supposition, when the consequences proceeding from it are followed further and further, will sooner or later lead to absurdities and palpable contradictions. During the period of tormenting doubt--and this was by no means a short one--when the pointer of the scales oscillated before me in perfect uncertainty between the pro and the con, and when any fact leading to a quick decision would have been most welcome to me, I took no small pains to detect some such contradictions among the inferences as to the class of Crustacea furnished by the Darwinian theory. But I found none, either then, or subsequently. Those which I thought I had found were dispelled on closer consideration, or actually became converted into supports for Darwin's theory.
Nor, so far as I am aware, have any of the NECESSARY consequences of Darwin's hypotheses been proved by any one else, to stand in clear and irreconcilable contradiction. And yet, as the most profound students of the animal kingdom are amongst Darwin's opponents, it would seem that it ought to have been an easy matter for them to crush him long since beneath a mass of absurd and contradictory inferences, if any such were to be drawn from his theory. To this want of demonstrated contradictions I think we may ascribe just the same importance in Darwin's favour, that his opponents have attributed to the absence of demonstrated intermediate forms between the species of the various strata of the earth. Independently of the reasons which Darwin gives for the preservation of such intermediate forms being only exceptional, this last mentioned circumstance will not be regarded as of very great significance by any one who has traced the development of an animal upon larvae fished from the sea, and had to seek in vain for months, and even