Facts and Arguments for Darwin, Fritz Muller [ebook reader computer .TXT] 📗

They must rather have disappeared again as they arose, and the lists would remain open to the males under variation, only in respect of their sexual relations. In these they might acquire advantages over their rivals by their being enabled either to seek or to seize the females better. The best smellers would overcome all that were inferior to them in this respect, unless the latter had other advantages, such as more powerful chelae, to oppose to them. The best claspers would overcome all less strongly armed champions, unless these opposed to them some other advantage, such as sharper senses. It will be easily understood how in this manner all the intermediate steps less favoured in the development of the olfactory filaments or of the chelae would disappear from the lists, and two sharply defined forms, the best smellers and the best claspers, would remain as the sole adversaries. At the present day the contest seems to have been decided in favour of the latter, as they occur in greatly preponderating numbers, perhaps a hundred of them to one smeller.

To return to Bronn’s objection. When he says that “for the support of the Darwinian theory, and in order to explain why many species do not coalesce by means of intermediate forms, he would gladly discover some external or internal principle which should compel the variations of each species to advance in ONE direction, instead of merely permitting them in all directions,” we may, in this as in many other cases, find such a principle in the fact that actually only a few directions stand open in which the variations are at the same time improvements, and in which therefore they can accumulate and become fixed; whilst in all others, being either indifferent or injurious, they will go as lightly as they come.

(FIGURE 7. Orchestia Darwinii, n. sp. male.)

The occurrence of two kinds of males in the same species may perhaps not be a very rare phenomenon in animals in which the males differ widely from the females in structure. But only in those which can be procured in sufficient abundance, will it be possible to arrive at a conviction that we have not before us either two different species, or animals of different ages. From my own observation, although not very extensive, I can give a second example. It relates to a shore-hopper (Orchestia). The animal (Figure 7) lives in marshy places in the vicinity of the sea, under decaying leaves, in the loose earth which the Marsh Crabs (Gelasimus, Sesarma, Cyclograpsus, etc.) throw up around the entrance to their borrows, and even under dry cow-dung and horse-dung. If this species removes to a greater distance from the shore than the majority of its congeners (although some of them advance very far into the land and even upon mountains of a thousand feet in height, such as O. tahitensis, telluris, and sylvicola), its male differs still more from all known species by the powerful chelae of the second pair of feet. Orchestia gryphus, from the sandy coast of Monchgut, alone presents a somewhat similar structure, but in a far less degree; elsewhere the form of the hand usual in the Amphipoda occurs. Now there is a considerable difference between the males of this species, especially in the structure of these chelae—a different so great that we can scarcely find a parallel to it elsewhere between two species of the genus—and yet, as in Tanais, we do not meet with a long series of structures running into one another, but only two forms united by no intermediate terms (Figures 8 and 9). The males would be unhesitatingly regarded as belonging to two well-marked species if they did not live on the same spot, with undistinguishable females. That the two forms of the chelae of the males occur in this species is so far worthy of notice, because the formation of the chelae, which differs widely from the ordinary structure in the other species, indicates that it has quite recently undergone considerable changes, and therefore such a phenomenon was to be expected in it rather than in other species.

(FIGURES 8 AND 9. The two forms of the chelae of the male of Orchestia Darwinii, magnified 45 times.)

I cannot refrain from taking this opportunity of remarking that (so far as appears from Spence Bate’s catalogue), for two different kinds of males (Orchestia telluris and sylvicola) which live together in the forests of New Zealand, only one form of female is known, and hazarding the supposition that we have here a similar case. It does not seem to me to be probable that two nearly allied species of these social Amphipoda should occur mixed together under the same conditions of life.

(FIGURE 10. Coxal lamella of the penultimate pair of feet of the male (a), and coxal lamella, with the three following joints of the same pair of feet of the female (b) of Melita Messalina, magnified 45 diam.

FIGURE 11. Coxal lamella of the same pair of feet of the female of M. insatiabilis.)

As the males of several species of Melita are distinguished by the powerful unpaired clasp-forceps, the females of some other species of the same genus are equally distinguished from all other Amphipoda by the circumstance that in them a peculiar apparatus is developed which facilitates their being held by the male. The coxal lamellae of the penultimate pair of feet are produced into hook-like processes, of which the male lays hold with the hands of the first pair of feet. The two species in which I am acquainted with this structure are amongst the most salacious animals of their order, even females which are laden with eggs in all stages of development, not unfrequently have their males upon their backs. The two species are nearly allied to Melita palmata Leach (Gammarus Dugesii, Edw.), which is widely distributed on the European coasts, and has been frequently investigated; unfortunately, however, I can find no information as to whether the females of this or any other European species possess a similar contrivance. In M. exilii all the coxal lamellae are of the ordinary formation. Nevertheless, be this as it will, whether they exist in two or in twenty species, the occurrence of these peculiar hook-like processes is certainly very limited.

Now our two species live sheltered beneath slightly tilted stones in the neighbourhood of the shore: one of them, Melita Messalina, so high that it is but rarely covered by the water; the other, Melita insatiabilis, a little lower; both species live together in numerous swarms. We cannot therefore suppose that the loving couples are threatened with disturbance more frequently than those of other species, nor would it be more difficult for the male, than for those of other species, in case of his losing his female, to find a new one. Nor is it any more easy to see how the contrivance on the body of the female for insuring the act of copulation could be injurious to other species. But so long as it is not demonstrated that our species are particularly in want of this contrivance, or that the latter would rather be injurious than beneficial to other species, its presence only in these few Amphipoda will have to be regarded not as the work of far-seeing wisdom, but as that of a favourable chance made use of by Natural Selection. Under the latter supposition its isolated occurrence is intelligible, whilst we cannot perceive why the Creator blessed just these few species with an apparatus which he found to be quite compatible with the “general plan of structure” of the Amphipoda, and yet denied it to others which live under the same external conditions, and equal them even in their extraordinary salacity. Associated with, or in the immediate vicinity of the two species of Melita, live two species of Allorchestes, the pairs of which are met with almost more numerously than the single animals, and yet their females show no trace of the above-mentioned processes of the coxal lamellae.

These cases, I think, must be brought to bear against the conception supported with so much genius and knowledge by Agassiz, that species are embodied thoughts of the Creator; and, with these, all similar instances in which arrangements which would be equally beneficial to all the species of a group are wanting in the majority and only conferred upon a few special favourites, which do not seem to want them any more than the rest.

 

CHAPTER 5. RESPIRATION IN LAND CRABS.

Among the numerous facts in the natural history of the Crustacea upon which a new and clear light is thrown by Darwin’s theory, besides the two forms of the males in our Tanais and in Orchestia Darwinii, there is one which appears to me of particular importance, namely, the character of the branchial cavity in the air-breathing Crabs, of which, unfortunately, I have been unable to investigate some of the most remarkable (Gecarcinus, Ranina). As this character, namely, the existence of an entrance behind the branchiae, has hitherto been noticed, even as a fact, only in Ranina, I will go into it in some detail. I have already mentioned that, as indeed is required by Darwin’s theory, this entrant orifice is produced in different manners in the different families.

In the Frog-crab (Ranina) of the Indian Ocean, which, according to Rumphius, loves to climb up on the roofs of the houses, the ordinary anterior entrant orifice is entirely wanting according to Milne-Edwards, and the entrance of a canal opening into the hindmost parts of the branchial cavity is situated beneath the commencement of the abdomen.

The case is most simple in some of the Grapsoidae, as in Aratus Pisonii, a charming, lively Crab which ascends the mangrove bushes (Rhizophora) and gnaws their leaves. By means of its short but remarkably acute claws, which prick like pins when it runs over the hand, this Crab climbs with the greatest agility upon the thinnest twigs. Once, when I had one of these animals sitting upon my hand, I noticed that it elevated the hinder part of its carapace, and that by this means a wide fissure was opened upon each side above the last pair of feet, through which I could look far into the branchial cavity. I have since been unable to procure this remarkable animal again, but on the other hand, I have frequently repeated the same observation upon another animal of the same family (apparently a true Grapsus), which lives abundantly upon the rocks of our coast. Whilst the hinder part of the carapace rises and the above-mentioned fissure is formed, the anterior part seems to sink, and to narrow or entirely close the anterior entrant orifice. Under water the elevation of the carapace never takes place. The animal therefore opens its branchial cavity in front or behind, according as it has to breathe water or air. How the elevation of the carapace is effected I do not know, but I believe that a membranous sac, which extends from the body cavity far into the branchial cavity beneath the hinder part of the carapace, is inflated by the impulsion of the fluids of the body, and the carapace is thereby raised.

I have also observed the same elevation of the carapace in some species of the allied genera Sesarma and Cyclograpsus, which dig deep holes in marshy ground, and often run about upon the wet mud, or sit, as if keeping watch, before their burrows. One must, however, wait for a long time with these animals, when taken out of the water, before they open their branchial cavity to the air, for they possess a wonderful arrangement, by means of which they can continue to breathe water for some time when out of the water. The orifices for the egress of the water which has served for respiration, are situated in these, as in most Crabs, in the anterior angles of the