1835 Essay on Births and Deaths of Species
(Reprinted with permission of Syndics of Cambridge University Library, DAR 42:97.2)
» listen (mp3, 4:10) to David Kohn provide a broader context to this passage and why Darwin wrote it
Image transcription →
a). The following analogy I am aware is a false one; but when I consider the enormous extension of life of an individual plant, seen in the grafting of an Apple tree, & that all these thousand trees are subject to the duration of life which one bud contained. I cannot see such difficulty in believing a similar duration might be propagatedwith true generation.— If gradual deaths the existence of species is allowed, each acording to its kind, we must suppose deaths to follow one after at different epochs, & then successive births must repeople the globe or the number of its inhabitants has Varied exceedingly at different periods.— A fact supposition in contradiction to the fitness, with which the Author of Nature has now established.
