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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: Morphology become intelligible,--whether we look to the same pattern
displayed in the homologous organs, to whatever purpose applied, of the
different species of a class; or to the homologous parts constructed on the
same pattern in each individual animal and plant.
On the principle of successive slight variations, not necessarily or
generally supervening at a very early period of life, and being inherited
at a corresponding period, we can understand the great leading facts in
Embryology; namely, the resemblance in an individual embryo of the
homologous parts, which when matured will become widely different from each
other in structure and function; and the resemblance in different species
of a class of the homologous parts or organs, though fitted in the adult
 On the Origin of Species |