Species

162 Species

Darwin is correct on both points. The Strickland Rules, as they came to be
known, did indeed originally cite the 12th edition, but the 10th was the edition in
which bionomials were first used consistently and which became the benchmark edi-
tion. Darwin was a member of the commission that determined the Strickland Rules
in 1842, and which became the foundation for later strict taxonomic protocols.^29
They were published and adopted by the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, forming the basis for the later Blanchard Code of 1889, itself the basis
for the International Rules of 1898, adopted in 1901.^30 McOuat observes that this
was part of a general professionalization of taxonomy, removing the “right” to name
species from birdwatchers and gardeners to preclude confusion and synonymity.^31 It
is worth noting, with Amundson, that these were only nominally essentialistic—the
name had to have a definition, but there was no requirement that the species taxon
had an essence.

On the Origin of Species, on Species

In the Origin^32 Darwin makes many substantive and theoretical claims about spe-
cies. In the chapter entitled “Variation under domestication,” he makes the following
statements intended to convince those who rejected the mutability of species on logi-
cal grounds as well as practical ones. He notes that variation is an established fact
within species, and that morphology is not a safe guide:

Indefinite variability is a much more common result of changed conditions than defi-

nite variability, and has probably played a more important part in the formation of our

domestic races. We see indefinite variability in the endless slight peculiarities which

distinguish the individuals of the same species, and which cannot be accounted for by

inheritance from either parent or from some more remote ancestor. [p16]

Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which, if shown to an orni-

thologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly be ranked by him

as well-defined species. [p25]

May not those naturalists who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than

does the breeder, and knowing no more than he does of the intermediate links in the

long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our domestic races are descended from

the same parents—may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of

species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other species? [p29]

But what concerns us is that the domestic varieties of the same species differ from

each other in almost every character, which man has attended to and selected, more

than do the distinct species of the same genera. [p37]

(^29) Amundson 2005, 47.
(^30) Mayr et al. 1953, 205. See Appendix A.
(^31) McOuat 1996.
(^32) All quotations and page numbers from the 6th edition [Da r win 1872]. Darwin’s views on species as a
category do not seem to have changed much between the first edition [Da r win 1859] and this edition.
However, his view on gradual evolution, and the possibility of allopatric speciation, seems to have
affected his expression of the nature of species. See Wilkins and Nelson 2008.