Abstract
PROF. RAY LANKESTER has mistaken me. When I said in my last letter of October 8 that “all organs whatever do actually pass through rudimentary stages in which actual use is impossible,” I referred specially to the embryological development of the individual. This is a fact which cannot be denied. But on the Darwinian hypothesis this fact applies equally to the birth of species—which are nothing but the passing results of individual variation. If true now of all individuals, it must, on that hypothesis, have been true of them for all time.
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ARGYLL Prophetic Germs . Nature 38, 615 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038615b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038615b0
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