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Charles Darwin · Sixth edition, 1872

On the Origin of Species

Follow Darwin’s argument through observation, variation, struggle, and the difficulties that test an explanation of life’s changing forms.

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Contents

  1. Historical Sketch
  2. Introduction
  3. Chapter 1: Variation Under Domestication
  4. Chapter 2: Variation Under Nature
  5. Chapter 3: Struggle for Existence
  6. Chapter 4: Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest
  7. Chapter 5: Laws of Variation
  8. Chapter 6: Difficulties of the Theory
  9. Chapter 7: Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection
  10. Chapter 8: Instinct
  11. Chapter 9: Hybridism
  12. Chapter 10: On the Imperfection of the Geological Record
  13. Chapter 11: On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings
  14. Chapter 12: Geographical Distribution
  15. Chapter 13: Geographical Distribution, continued
  16. Chapter 14: Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings
  17. Chapter 15: Recapitulation and Conclusion
  18. Glossary of scientific terms
  19. Historical index · Printed page references

About this text

Charles Darwin · Sixth edition, 1872. Digital source: Project Gutenberg, ebook 2009. This reading text follows the edition used in our interactive reader.

This is the sixth edition (1872), with the Historical Sketch, introduction, and fifteen chapters. The source edition’s glossary and historical index have been added to the corpus reading text. Index numbers refer to printed pages. This text edition does not reproduce the branching diagram discussed in Chapter 4.

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