The quality of being subject to variation

Usage examples of variability.

A large amount of inheritable and diversified variability is favourable, but I believe mere individual differences suffice for the work.

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Whether such variability be taken advantage of by natural selection, and whether the variations be accumulated to a greater or lesser amount, thus causing a greater or lesser amount of modification in the varying species, depends on many complex contingencies,--on the variability being of a beneficial nature, on the power of intercrossing, on the rate of breeding, on the slowly changing physical conditions of the country, and more especially on the nature of the other inhabitants with which the varying species comes into competition.

The effects of variability are modified by various degrees of inheritance and of reversion.

There may be truly said to be a constant struggle going on between, on the one hand, the tendency to reversion to a less modified state, as well as an innate tendency to further variability of all kinds, and, on the other hand, the power of steady selection to keep the breed true.

For in this case the variability will seldom as yet have been fixed by the continued selection of the individuals varying in the required manner and degree, and by the continued rejection of those tending to revert to a former and less modified condition.

This greater variability of mongrels than of hybrids does not seem to me at all surprising.

The slight degree of variability in hybrids from the first cross or in the first generation, in contrast with their extreme variability in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact and deserves attention.

Nearly all geology texts tell you that continental crust is three to six miles thick under the oceans, about twenty-five miles thick under the continents, and forty to sixty miles thick under big mountain chains, but there are many puzzling variabilities within these generalizations.

When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature.

But the much greater variability, as well as the greater frequency of monstrosities, under domestication or cultivation, than under nature, leads me to believe that deviations of structure are in some way due to the nature of the conditions of life, to which the parents and their more remote ancestors have been exposed during several generations.

I will here only add that their variability seems to be owing to their uselessness, and therefore to natural selection having no power to check deviations in their structure.

Chapter II Variation under Nature Variability -- Individual Differences -- Doubtful species -- Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most -- Species of the larger genera in any country vary more than the species of the smaller genera -- Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

Chapter II Variation Under Nature Variability -- Individual differences -- Doubtful species -- Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most -- Species of the larger genera in any country vary more than the species of the smaller genera -- Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

Variability in the same parts of the organisation has generally been taken advantage of in giving secondary sexual differences to the sexes of the same species, and specific differences to the several species of the same genus.