﻿Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 227 



tion of these principles is evident from the last 

 edition of the Origin of Species. But as these " laws 

 of growth " refer to causes confessedly unknown, 

 I will not occupy space by discussing this division 

 of our subject — further than to observe that, as we 

 shall subsequently see, many of the facts which 

 fall under it are so irreconcilably adverse to the 

 Wallacean doctrine of specific characters as univer- 

 sally adaptive, that in the face of them Mr. Wallace 

 himself appears at times to abandon his doctrine 

 in toto. 



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