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TITLE: FACTS AND ARGUMENTS FOR DARWIN
AUTHOR: FRITZ MULLER
EBOOK: E01941 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

FACTS AND ARGUMENTS

FOR

DARWIN.

BY FRITZ MULLER.

WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY W.S. DALLAS, F.L.S.,

ASSISTANT SECRETARY TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1869.

MR. DARWIN'S WORKS.

A NATURALIST'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD; BEING A JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES
INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY AND GEOLOGY OF COUNTRIES VISITED. Post 8vo. 9
shillings.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION; OR, THE
PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. WOODCUTS. Post
8vo. 15 shillings.

THE VARIOUS CONTRIVANCES BY WHICH BRITISH AND FOREIGN ORCHIDS ARE
FERTILISED BY INSECTS, AND ON THE GOOD EFFECTS OF INTERCROSSING.
Woodcuts, Post 8vo. 9 shillings.

THE VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTICATION. Illustrations.
2 volumes, 8vo. 28 shillings.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

My principal reason for undertaking the translation of Dr. Fritz
Muller's admirable work on the Crustacea, entitled 'Fur Darwin,' was
that it was still, although published as long ago as 1864, and highly
esteemed by the author's scientific countrymen, absolutely unknown to a
great number of English naturalists, including some who have occupied
themselves more or less specially with the subjects of which it treats.
It possesses a value quite independent of its reference to Darwinism,
due to the number of highly interesting and important facts in the
natural history and particularly the developmental history of the
Crustacea, which its distinguished author, himself an unwearied and
original investigator of these matters, has brought together in it. To a
considerable section of English naturalists the tone adopted by the
author in speaking of one of the greatest of their number will be a
source of much gratification.

In granting his permission for the translation of his little book, Dr.
Fritz Muller kindly offered to send some emendations and additions to
certain parts of it. His notes included many corrections of printers'
errors, some of which would have proved unintelligible without his aid,
some small additions and notes which have been inserted in their proper
places, and two longer pieces, one forming a footnote near the close of
Chapter 11, the other at the end of Chapter 12, describing the probable
mode of evolution of the Rhizocephala from the Cirripedia.

Of the execution of the translation I will say but little. My chief
object in this, as in other cases, has been to furnish, as nearly as
possible, a literal version of the original, regarding mere elegance of
expression as of secondary importance in a scientific work. As much of
Dr. Muller's German does not submit itself to such treatment very
readily, I must beg his and the reader's indulgence for any
imperfections arising from this cause.

W.S.D.

LONDON, 15TH FEBRUARY, 1869.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

It is not the purpose of the following pages to discuss once more the
arguments deduced for and against Darwin's theory of the origin of
species, or to weigh them one against the other. Their object is simply
to indicate a few facts favourable to this theory, collected upon the
same South American ground, on which, as Darwin tells us, the idea first
occurred to him of devoting his attention to "the origin of
species,--that mystery of mysteries."

It is only by the accumulation of new and valuable material that the
controversy will gradually be brought into a state fit for final
decision, and this appears to be for the present of more importance than
a repeated analysis of what is already before us. Moreover, it is but
fair to leave it to Darwin himself at first to beat off the attacks of
his opponents from the splendid structure which he has raised with such
a master-hand.

F.M.

DESTERRO, 7TH SEPTEMBER, 1863.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER 2. THE SPECIES OF MELITA.

CHAPTER 3. MORPHOLOGY OF CRUSTACEA.

CHAPTER 4. SEXUAL PECULIARITIES AND DIMORPHISM.

CHAPTER 5. RESPIRATION IN LAND CRABS.

CHAPTER 6. STRUCTURE OF THE HEART IN EDRIOPHTHALMA.

CHAPTER 7. DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF PODOPHTHALMA.

CHAPTER 8. DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF EDRIOPHTHALMA.

CHAPTER 9. DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF ENTOMOSTRACA,
           CIRRIPEDES, AND RHIZOCEPHALA.

CHAPTER 10. ON THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION.

CHAPTER 11. ON THE PROGRESS OF EVOLUTION.

CHAPTER 12. PROGRESS OF EVOLUTION IN CRUSTACEA.

HISTORY OF CRUSTACEA.

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTORY.

When I had read Charles Darwin's book 'On the Origin of Species,' it
seemed to me that there was one mode, and that perhaps the most certain,
of testing the correctness of the views developed in it, namely, to
attempt apply them as specially as possible to some particular group of
animals. such an attempt to establish a genealogical tree, whether for
the families of a class, the genera of a large family, or for the
species of an extensive genus, and to produce pictures as complete and
intelligible as possible of the common ancestors of the various smaller
and larger circles, might furnish a result in three different ways.

1. In the first place, Darwin's suppositions when thus applied might
lead to irreconcilable and contradictory conclusions, from which the
erroneousness of the suppositions might be inferred. If Darwin's
opinions are false, it was to be expected that contradictions would
accompany their detailed application at every step, and that these, by
their cumulative force, would entirely destroy the suppositions from
which they proceeded, even though the deductions derived from each
particular case might possess little of the unconditional nature of
mathematical proof.

2. Secondly, the attempt might be successful to a greater or less
extent. If it was possible upon the foundation and with the aid of the
Darwinian theory, to show in what sequence the various smaller and
larger circles had separated from the common fundamental form and from
each other, in what sequence they had acquired the peculiarities which
now characterise them, and what transformations they had undergone in
the lapse of ages,--if the establishment of such a genealogical tree, of
a primitive history of the group under consideration, free from internal
contradictions, was possible,--then this conception, the more completely
it took up all the species within itself, and the more deeply it enabled
us to descend into the details of their structure, must in the same
proportion bear in itself the warrant of its truth, and the more
convincingly prove that the foundation upon which it is built is no
loose sand, and that it is more than merely "an intellectual dream."

3. In the third place, however, it was possible, and this could not but
appear, prima facie, the most probable case, that the attempt might be
frustrated by the difficulties standing in its way, without settling the
question, either way, in a perfectly satisfactory manner. But if it were
only possible in this way to arrive for oneself at a moderately certain
independent judgment upon a matter affecting the highest questions so
deeply, even this alone could not but be esteemed a great gain.

Having determined to make the attempt, I had in the first place to
decide upon some particular class. The choice was necessarily limited to
those the chief forms of which were easily to be obtained alive in some
abundance. The Crabs and Macrurous Crustacea, the Stomapoda, the
Diastylidae, the Amphipoda and Isopoda, the Ostracoda and Daphnidae, the
Copepoda and Parasita, the Cirripedes and Rhizocephala of our coast,
representing the class of Crustacea with the deficiency only of the
Phyllopoda and Xiphosura, furnished a long and varied, and at the same
time intimately connected series, such as was at my command in no other
class. But even independently of this circumstance the selection of the
Crustacea could hardly have been doubtful. Nowhere else, as has already
been indicated by various writers, is the temptation stronger to give to
the expressions "relationship, production from a common fundamental
form," and the like, more than a mere figurative signification, than in
the case of the lower Crustacea. Among the parasitic Crustacea,
especially, everybody has long been accustomed to speak, in a manner
scarcely admitting of a figurative meaning, of their arrest of
development by parasitism, as if the transformation of species were a
matter of course. It would certainly never appear to any one to be a
pastime worthy of the Deity, to amuse himself with the contrivance of
these marvellous cripplings, and so they were supposed to have fallen by
their own fault, like Adam, from their previous state of perfection.

That a great part of the larger and smaller groups into which this class

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