Abstract
IN a recent issue of the Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology, No. 172) there is a short paper by my friend Dr. St. George Mivart, in which he gives numerous cases of species of Lories peculiar to various Papuan or Pacific Islands, which differ in some details of coloration from allied species in other islands, while they are usually altogether unlike the other birds inhabiting the same island. He then argues, as Captain Hutton had done with regard to similar phenomena among the fruit pigeons of the genus Ptilopus, that these various specific markings cannot be useful, and especially that they cannot be needed as “recognition-marks,” because the whole coloration of the genus is so distinct that they cannot possibly be confounded with any other birds now inhabiting the same islands. He therefore concludes that these facts “are fatal to a utilitarian explanation of the origin of all specific characters.” At the same time he accepts evolution and the natural biological origin of these and all other characters. These conclusions appear to me to be wholly illogical and to be reached by omitting to take account of the fundamental idea of organic evolution itself, namely, that each species has been, somehow, developed from an allied but distinct species, living or extinct. I therefore ask leave to point out how this omission affects the problem.
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WALLACE, A. The Utility of Specific Characters. Nature 59, 246 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/059246a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/059246a0
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