Facts and Arguments for Darwin

Chapter 4: AUTHOR’S PREFACE

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About This Book

This work presents a collection of empirical observations and developmental studies of crustaceans gathered by the author in South America, marshaling anatomical, embryological, and life-history evidence in support of Darwinian evolution. It treats systematic descriptions and comparative morphology (including a survey of Melita), sexual dimorphism, respiratory adaptations of land crabs, cardiac anatomy, and the developmental histories of multiple crustacean groups such as podophthalmous and edriophthalmous forms, entomostracans, cirripedes, and rhizocephalans. It also discusses classification principles, traces evolutionary progress within Crustacea, and proposes pathways by which parasitic rhizocephalans could have arisen from barnacle-like ancestors.

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.