MORPHOLOGY 39 



selections adapted to various conditions. We know 

 that proportion, size, shape of bones and their accom- 

 panying soft parts vary, and hence constant selection 

 would alter, to almost any purpose (?) the framework 

 of an organism, but yet would leave a general, even 

 closest similarity in it. 



[We know the number of similar parts, as verte- 

 brse and ribs can vary, hence this also we might 

 expect.] Also (if) the changes carried on to a certain 

 point, doubtless type will be lost, and this is case 

 with Plesiosaurus 1 . The unity of type in past and 

 present ages of certain great divisions thus un- 

 doubtedly receives the simplest explanation. 



There is another class of allied and almost 

 identical facts, admitted by the soberest physio- 

 logists, [from the study of a certain set of organs in 

 a group of organisms] and refers (? referring) to a 

 unity of type of different organs in the same in- 

 dividual, denominated the science of " Morphology." 

 The (? this) discovered by beautiful and regular 

 series, and in the case of plants from monstrous 

 changes, that certain organs in an individual are 

 other organs metamorphosed. Thus every botanist 

 considers petals, nectaries, stamens, pistils, germeii 

 as metamorphosed leaf. They thus explain, in 

 the most lucid manner, the position and number 

 of all parts of the flower, and the curious conversion 

 under cultivation of one part into another. The 

 complicated double set of jaws and palpi of crusta- 

 ceans 2 , and all insects are considered as metamor- 

 phosed (limbs) and to see the series is to admit this 

 phraseology. The skulls of the vertebrates are un- 

 doubtedly composed of three metamorphosed verte- 

 brae; thus we can understand the strange form of 



1 In the Origin, Ed. i. p. 436, vi. p. 598, the author speaks of the 

 " general pattern " being obscured in the paddles of " extinct gigantic sea- 

 lizards." 



a See Origin, Ed. i. p. 437, vi. p. 599. 



