Darwin and the Darwinians 161
biogeographic view of species as the result of geological isolation, which as we have
seen in his Notebooks was a focus of his thinking at this time.Besides the several evident causes of destruction, there appears to be some more mys-
terious agency generally at work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to
pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the
Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result. Nor is it the white man
alone that thus acts the destroyer; the Polynesian of Malay extraction has in parts of the
East Indian archipelago, thus driven before him the dark-coloured native. The varieties
of man seem to act on each other in the same way as different species of animals—the
stronger always extirpating the weaker. [chapter XIX, p419]Again in hindsight we can see Darwin foreshadowing the idea that better-adapted
species will exclude other species in competition with them.
In Coral Reefs, Darwin uses the term species conventionally, never noting any
great problem with corals.^27 In the Monograph on Cirripedia, he describes his taxo-
nomic practice in the Preface:
In those cases in which a genus includes only a single species, I have followed the
practice of some botanists, and given only the generic character, believing it to be
impossible, before a second species is discovered, to know which characters will prove
of specific, in contradistinction to generic, value.In accordance with the Rules of the British Association, I have faithfully endeav-
oured to give to each species the first name attached to it, subsequently to the intro-
duction of the binomial system, in 1758, in the tenth edition.[1] In accordance with the
Rules, I have rejected all names before this date, and all MS. names. In one single
instance, for reasons fully assigned in the proper place, I have broken through the
great law of priority. I have given much fewer synonyms than is usual in conchological
works; this partly arises from my conviction that giving references to works, in which
there is not any original matter, or in which the Plates are not of a high order of excel-
lence, is absolutely injurious to the progress of natural history, and partly, from the
impossibility of feeling certain to which species the short descriptions given in most
works are applicable;—thus, to take the commonest species, the Lepas anatifera, I
have not found a single description (with the exception of the anatomical description
by M. Martin St. Ange) by which this species can be certainly discriminated from the
almost equally common Lepas Hillii. I have, however, been fortunate in having been
permitted to examine a considerable number of authentically named specimens, (to
which I have attached the sign (!) used by botanists,) so that several of my synonyms
are certainly correct.[1] In the Rules published by the British Association, the 12th edition (1766) is specified, but I am
informed by Mr. Strickland that this is an error, and that the binomial method was followed in
the 10th edition of the ‘Systema Naturæ.’ [Part I, pp ix−x]^28(^27) Da r win 1842. Which is odd, since coral species are notoriously difficult to define or delineate [Soong
and Lang 1992, Veron 2 0 01, Bernardi et al. 2002, Carlon and Budd 2002, Pennisi 2002, Willis et al.
2006 ]. At this time he would still have been relying on purely morphological criteria, and this is
borne out by the way in which he does describe them.
(^28) Da r win, 1851.