Charles Darwin's Natural Selection: Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written from 1856 to 1858

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Nov 26, 1987 - Science - 692 pages
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is unquestionably one of the chief landmarks in biology. The Origin (as it is widely known) was literally only an abstract of the manuscript Darwin had originally intended to complete and publish as the formal presentation of his views on evolution. Compared with the Origin, his original long manuscript work on Natural Selection, which is presented here and made available for the first time in printed form, has more abundant examples and illustrations of Darwin's argument, plus an extensive citation of sources.

From inside the book

Contents

General Introduction
9
Editorial considerations
15
Darwins table of contents
25
Possibility of all organic beings crossing
33
Variation under nature
92
The struggle for existence
172
On natural selection
213
Laws of variation
275
Hybridism
387
Mental powers and instincts of animals
463
Geographical Distribution
528
Appendices
567
Bibliography
587
Guides to the texts of the long and the short versions
630
Collation between the Origin and Natural Selection
635
Index
648

Difficulties on the theory
339

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Page 618 - Professor Owen's Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrate Animals, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1844 and 1846.

About the author (1987)

Charles Robert Darwin, born in 1809, was an English naturalist who founded the theory of Darwinism, the belief in evolution as determined by natural selection. Although Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and then studied at Cambridge University to become a minister, he had been interested in natural history all his life. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a noted English poet, physician, and botanist who was interested in evolutionary development. Darwin's works have had an incalculable effect on all aspects of the modern thought. Darwin's most famous and influential work, On the Origin of Species, provoked immediate controversy. Darwin's other books include Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Charles Darwin died in 1882.

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