9O CHARLES DARWIN 



Variation, to a greater or less degree, is a common 

 and well-known fact in nature. More especially, animals 

 and plants under domestication tend to vary from one 

 another far more than do the individuals of any one 

 species in the wild state. Eabbits in a warren are all 

 alike in shape, size, colour, and features : rabbits in a 

 hutch vary indefinitely in the hue of their fur, the 

 length of their ears, the character of their coat, and half 

 a dozen other minor particulars, well known to the 

 observant souls of boys and fanciers. This great varia- 

 bility, though partly perhaps referable to excess of food, 

 is probably due on the whole to their having been 

 raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and 

 somewhat different from, those to which the parent 

 species is commonly exposed in a state of nature. In 

 other words, variability is one result of altered and more 

 varied surrounding circumstances. 



Again, this variability is usually indefinite. You can- 

 not say what direction it will take, or to what particular 

 results it is likely in any special instance to lead. 

 Marked differences sometimes occur even between the 

 young of the same litter, or between the seedlings sown 

 from the same capsule. As a rule, the variations 

 exhibit themselves in connection with sexual reproduc- 

 tion ; but sometimes, as in the case of ' sporting plants/ 

 a new bud suddenly produces leaves or flowers of a 

 different character from the rest of those on the self- 

 same stem, thus showing that the tendency to vary is 

 inherent, as it were, in the organism itself. Upon this 



Origin of Species. The abstract is taken for the most part from the 

 latest and fullest enlarged edition, but attention is usually called in 

 passing to the points which did. not appear in the first issue of 1859. 



