the case of these strongly pronounced variations, that the plants have been
caught in the act of progressing towards a higher state of development? On
the contrary, I should infer from the mere fact of the parts in question
differing or varying greatly on the same plant, that such modifications
were of extremely small importance to the plants themselves, of whatever
importance they may generally be to us for our classifications. The
acquisition of a useless part can hardly be said to raise an organism in
the natural scale; and in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers, above
described, if any new principle has to be invoked, it must be one of
retrogression rather than of progression; and so it must be with many
parasitic and degraded animals. We are ignorant of the exciting cause of
the above specified modifications; but if the unknown cause were to act
almost uniformly for a length of time, we may infer that the result would
be almost uniform; and in this case all the individuals of the species
would be modified in the same manner.

>From the fact of the above characters being unimportant for the welfare of
the species, any slight variations which occurred in them would not have
been accumulated and augmented through natural selection. A structure
which has been developed through long-continued selection, when it ceases
to be of service to a species, generally becomes variable, as we see with
rudimentary organs; for it will no longer be regulated by this same power
of selection. But when, from the nature of the organism and of the
conditions, modifications have been induced which are unimportant for the
welfare of the species, they may be, and apparently often have been,
transmitted in nearly the same state to numerous, otherwise modified,
descendants. It cannot have been of much importance to the greater number
of mammals, birds, or reptiles, whether they were clothed with hair,
feathers or scales; yet hair has been transmitted to almost all mammals,
feathers to all birds, and scales to all true reptiles. A structure,