Page - 401 - in The Origin of Species

CENTRES OF SUPPOSED CREATION 401 broken interspaces. The great and striking influence of bar- riers of all kinds, is intelligible only on the view that the great majority of species have been produced on one side, and have not been able to migrate to the opposite side. Some few families, many sub-families, very many genera, and a still greater number of sections of genera, are con- fined to a single region; and it has been observed by several naturalists that the most natural genera, or those genera in which the species are most closely related to each other, are generally confined to the same country, or if they have a wide range that their range is continuous. What a strange anomaly it would be, if a directly opposite rule were to pre- vail, when we go down one step lower in the series, namely, to the individuals of the same species, and these had not been, at least at first, confined to some one region! Hence it seems to me, as it has to many other naturalists, that the view of each species having been produced in one area alone, and having subsequently migrated from that area as far as its powers of migration and subsistence under past and present conditions permitted, is the most probable. Un- doubtedly many cases occur, in which we cannot explain how the same species could have passed from one point to the other. But the geographical and climatal changes which have certainly occurred within recent geological times, must have rendered discontinuous the formerly continuous range of many species. So that we are reduced to consider whether the exceptions to continuity of range are so numerous and of so grave a nature, that we ought to give up the belief, rendered probable by general considerations, that each species has been produced within one area, and has migrated thence as far as it could. It would be hopelessly tedious to discuss all the exceptional cases of the same species, now living at distant and separated points, nor do I for a moment pretend that any explanation could be offered of many instances. But, after some preliminary remarks, I will discuss a few of the most striking classes of facts; namely, the existence of the same species on the summits of distant mountain ranges, and at distant points in the arctic and antarctic regions; and secondly (in the following chapter), the wide distribution of fresh-water productions; and thirdly, the occurrence of the