W. February 19, 1901._
Dear Sir,--I trust you will forgive a stranger troubling you with a
letter, but a friend has asked me whether, as a matter of fact, Darwin
held that _all_ living creatures descended from one and the same
ancestor, and that the pedigree of a humming-bird and that of a
hippopotamus would meet if traced far enough back. Can you tell me
whether Darwin did teach this?
I should have thought that as life was developed once, it probably could
and would be developed many times in different places, as month after
month, and year after year went by; and that, from the very first, it
probably took many different forms and characters, in the same way as
crystals take different forms and shapes, even when composed of the same
substance. From these many developments of "life" would descend as many
separate lines of evolution, one ending in the humming-bird, another in
the hippopotamus, a third in the kangaroo, etc., and their pedigrees
(however far back they might be traced) would not join until they
reached some primitive form of protoplasm,--Yours faithfully,
SAMUEL WADDINGTON.
* * * * *
TO MR. SAMUEL WADDINGTON
_Parkstone, Dorset. February 23, 1901._
Dear Sir,--Darwin believed that all living things originated from "a few
forms or from one"--as stated in the last sentence of his "Origin of
Species." But privately I am sure he believed in the _one_ origin.
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