Species example essay topic

319 words
Habitual instincts are inherited within each species. Ants and bees build their nests and hives with no previous experience. Birds migrate and build homes according to their unique inner senses. But instincts too may change over time as "consequences of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings... multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die".

Other chapters deal with related topics: hybridism; living species compared to those of ancient geological periods; extinction; geographical distribution of organisms; relationships between species; and the classification of organisms. Objections to the general theory of evolution are presented in both Darwin's conclusion and glossary of terms. Darwin's observations led him to believe that species did adapt to their changing surroundings. Furthermore, he was led to defend as a logical, observable - and even religious - corollary of this conclusion, a theory advancing the probability of common descent for all living creatures. Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of an individual.

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as lineal descendants of some few beings which have lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. The Origin of Species represents Darwin's many years of personal and intellectual struggle. It is candidly argued and presented in a flowing, orderly manner, then left for each reader to weigh the evidence. As a text on natural history, its ideas are refreshingly comprehensible and insightful.