The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (ebook smartphone TXT) 📕

not have ranged widely within the same country, and as the sea is apparently a still more formidable barrier, that they would never have extended to distant countries. But the case is exactly the reverse. Not only have many freshwater species, belonging to different classes, an enormous range, but allied species prevail in a remarkable manner throughout the world. When first collecting in the fresh waters of Brazil, I well remember feeling much surprise at the similarity of the freshwater insects, shells, etc., and at the dissimilarity of the surrounding terrestrial beings, compared with those of Britain.

But the wide ranging power of freshwater productions can, I think, in most cases be explained by their having become fitted, in a manner highly useful to them, for short and frequent migrations from pond to pond, or from stream to stream, within their own countries; and liability to wide dispersal would follow from this capacity as an almost necessary consequence. We can here consider only a few cases; of these, some of the most difficult to explain are presented by fish. It was formerly believed that the same freshwater species never existed on two continents distant from each other. But Dr. Gunther has lately shown that the Galaxias attenuatus inhabits Tasmania, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands and the mainland of South America. This is a wonderful case, and probably indicates dispersal from an Antarctic centre during a former warm period. This case, however, is rendered in some degree less surprising by the species of this genus having the power of crossing by some unknown means considerable spaces of open ocean: thus there is one species common to New Zealand and to the Auckland Islands, though separated by a distance of about 230 miles. On the same continent freshwater fish often range widely, and as if capriciously; for in two adjoining river systems some of the species may be the same and some wholly different.

It is probable that they are occasionally transported by what may be called accidental means. Thus fishes still alive are not very rarely dropped at distant points by whirlwinds; and it is known that the ova retain their vitality for a considerable time after removal from the water. Their dispersal may, however, be mainly attributed to changes in the level of the land within the recent period, causing rivers to flow into each other. Instances, also, could be given of this having occurred during floods, without any change of level. The wide differences of the fish on the opposite sides of most mountain-ranges, which are continuous and consequently must, from an early period, have completely prevented the inosculation of the river systems on the two sides, leads to the same conclusion. Some freshwater fish belong to very ancient forms, and in such cases there will have been ample time for great geographical changes, and consequently time and means for much migration. Moreover, Dr. Gunther has recently been led by several considerations to infer that with fishes the same forms have a long endurance. Saltwater fish can with care be slowly accustomed to live in fresh water; and, according to Valenciennes, there is hardly a single group of which all the members are confined to fresh water, so that a marine species belonging to a freshwater group might travel far along the shores of the sea, and could, it is probable, become adapted without much difficulty to the fresh waters of a distant land.

Some species of freshwater shells have very wide ranges, and allied species which, on our theory, are descended from a common parent, and must have proceeded from a single source, prevail throughout the world. Their distribution at first perplexed me much, as their ova are not likely to be transported by birds; and the ova, as well as the adults, are immediately killed by seawater. I could not even understand how some naturalised species have spread rapidly throughout the same country. But two facts, which I have observed⁠—and many others no doubt will be discovered⁠—throw some light on this subject. When ducks suddenly emerge from a pond covered with duckweed, I have twice seen these little plants adhering to their backs; and it has happened to me, in removing a little duckweed from one aquarium to another, that I have unintentionally stocked the one with freshwater shells from the other. But another agency is perhaps more effectual: I suspended the feet of a duck in an aquarium, where many ova of freshwater shells were hatching; and I found that numbers of the extremely minute and just-hatched shells crawled on the feet, and clung to them so firmly that when taken out of the water they could not be jarred off, though at a somewhat more advanced age they would voluntarily drop off. These just-hatched molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck’s feet, in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time a duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and if blown across the sea to an oceanic island, or to any other distant point, would be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet. Sir Charles Lyell informs me that a Dyticus has been caught with an Ancylus (a freshwater shell like a limpet) firmly adhering to it; and a water-beetle of the same family, a Colymbetes, once flew on board the Beagle, when forty-five miles distant from the nearest land: how much farther it might have been blown by a favouring gale no one can tell.

With respect to plants, it has long been known what enormous ranges many freshwater, and even marsh-species, have, both over continents and to the most remote oceanic islands. This is strikingly illustrated, according to Alph. de Candolle, in those large groups of terrestrial plants, which have very few aquatic members; for the latter seem immediately to acquire, as if in consequence, a wide range. I think favourable means of dispersal explain this fact. I have before mentioned