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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: less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural selection will often have
effected other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennae
or palpi, as a compensation for blindness. Notwithstanding such
modifications, we might expect still to see in the cave-animals of America,
affinities to the other inhabitants of that continent, and in those of
Europe, to the inhabitants of the European continent. And this is the case
with some of the American cave-animals, as I hear from Professor Dana; and
some of the European cave-insects are very closely allied to those of the
surrounding country. It would be most difficult to give any rational
explanation of the affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other
inhabitants of the two continents on the ordinary view of their independent
On the Origin of Species |
