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It is not that the same species are met with; for in some cases not one species is identically the same, but they belong to the same families, genera, and sections of genera, and sometimes are similarly characterised in such trifling points as mere superficial sculpture.
Wallace informs me that we here have, as he believes, an instance of protective mimicry confined to one sex, as will hereafter be more fully explained. The white female of the Cycnia resembles the very common Spilosoma menthrasti, both sexes of which are white; and Mr. On the other hand, in many genera, as Mr.
Among Reptiles, we find, for instance, that the Genera of our fresh-water Turtles differ from each other in the cut of their bill, in the arrangement of their scales, in the form of their claws, etc.
Among the shrubs were many evergreens, as Andromeda, and two extinct genera, Daphnogene and M'Clintockia, with fine leathery leaves, together with hazel, blackthorn, holly, logwood, and hawthorn.
Fritz Muller informs me that several kinds of butterflies in S. Brazil shew an unmistakable preference for certain colours over others: he observed that they very often visited the brilliant red flowers of five or six genera of plants, but never the white or yellow flowering species of the same and other genera, growing in the same garden; and I have received other accounts to the same effect.
Geographical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly marked in the Paleozoic epoch as at present, and those seemingly sudden appearances of new genera and species, which we ascribe to new creation, may be simple results of migration. It may be so; it may be otherwise.
Moreover, the species of the larger genera, which afford the greater number of varieties or incipient species, retain to a certain degree the character of varieties; for they differ from each other by a less amount of difference than do the species of smaller genera.
But we continually over-rate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage.
In earlier years, when some serious hesitation was felt by many to accept the new doctrine of evolution, a grave difficulty was found in the circumstance that new types not merely new species and new genera, but new orders and even sub-classes appeared in the geological record quite suddenly.
Strictly speaking, the Giraffes cannot be considered as belonging to the same family with the Camels, nor yet the Camels be classed with the Llamas; but there is a very great resemblance between these three genera of animals, and, except for scientific purposes, they form a group sufficiently natural.
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