198 MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE 



habits of life; for those individuals which had some one 

 part or several parts of their bodies rather more elongated 

 than usual, would generally have survived. These will have 

 intercrossed and left offspring, either inheriting the same 

 bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again in the 

 same manner ; while the individuals less favored in the same 

 respects will have been the most liable to perish. 



We here see that there is no need to separate single pairs, 

 as man does, when he methodically improves a breed : nat- 

 ural selection will preserve and thus separate all the superior 

 individuals, allowing them freely to intercross, and will 

 destroy all the inferior individuals. By this process long 

 continued, which exactly corresponds with what I have 

 called unconscious selection by man, combined, no doubt, 

 in a most important manner with the inherited effects of 

 the increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain 

 that an ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into 

 a giraffe. 



To this conclusion Mr. Mivart brings forward two ob- 

 jections. One is that the increased size of the body would 

 obviously require an increased supply of food, and he con- 

 siders it as " very problematical whether the disadvantages 

 thence arising would not, in times of scarcity, more than 

 counterbalance the advantages." But as the giraffe does 

 actually exist in large numbers in Africa, and as some of the 

 largest antelopes in the world, taller than an ox, abound 

 there, why should we doubt that, as far as size is concerned, 

 intermediate gradations could formerly have existed there, 

 subjected as now to severe dearths ? Assuredly the being 

 able to reach, at each stage of increased size, to a supply 

 of food left untouched by the other hoofed quadrupeds of 

 the country, would have been of some advantage to the 

 nascent giraffe. Nor must we overlook the fact, that in- 

 creased bulk would act as a protection against almost all 

 beasts of prey excepting the lion ; and against this animal, 

 its tall neck — and the taller the better — would, as Mr. 

 Chauncey Wright has remarked, serve as a watch-tower. 

 It is from this cause, as Sir S. Baker remarks, that no 

 animal is more difficult to stalk than the giraffe. This 

 animal also uses its long neck as a means of offence or de- 

 fence, by violently swinging its head armed with stump-like 

 horns. The preservation of each species can rarely be 

 determined by any one advantage, but by the union of all, 

 great and small. 



