Abstract

The two chapters on “Geographical Distribution” in On the Origin of Species reinforce a key premise of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theorizing: how the distribution of species around the globe supports his hypothesis of descent from a common ancestorAncestryfrom a common ancestor. The chapters also address other main evolutionary premises: the role of the individual in shaping both the future of a species as well as future species; the importance of the migration/dispersal of individuals through both “accidental” and “occasional” processes; and the “subsequent modification and multiplication of new forms” arising from that migration. Seed dispersal offers a compelling explanation for how related populations appear in geographically distinct areas of the globe. But in the context of the 1859 publication of Origin, it also served as a crucial counterpoint to the challenges presented by the popular antievolutionary theory of separate centers of creation. Proponents of this theory, such as Louis Agassiz, argued that species originated simultaneously in widely separated areas of the globe via multiple creative acts. Separate creation rationalized racist polygenist theories undergirding slavery in the United States and in global politics of enslavement and racial difference. In Darwin’s work, seeds instead illuminate a world of relations linked by physiology, geography, and time.