194 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



As fancy pigeons are obviously adapted to the tastes of pigeon- 

 fanciers, and as they owe their continued existence to this adapta- 

 tion, in the absence of which they would have been exterminated 

 long ago by man, it is hard to see why any one who knows what 

 changes man has brought about by selection should assert that 

 natural selection cannot bring about adaptation unless it is first 

 supplied, from some other source, with adaptive "variations" in, 

 at the least, their incipient stages ; yet the incompetency of natural 

 selection to account for these incipient stages has been made much 

 of, not only by those who believe that there is no scientific or 

 natural explanation of these incipient stages, but also by those who 

 attribute them to the direct adaptive action of the conditions of 

 life. 



In a book on the " Genesis of Species," published soon after the 

 " Origin," Mivart argues that even if we admit that natural selection 

 is worthy of consideration, it can be no explanation of any adapta- 

 tion which is not so useful that it preserves the life of its pos- 

 sessor; and he asserts that while perfected adaptations may thus 

 preserve life, we cannot believe that the first minute beginnings of 

 adaptation are valuable enough to be preservative. 



Mivart's argument has recently been revived, in a somewhat 

 modified form, by Romanes ("Darwin and after Darwin," II.), who 

 holds that there are cases of adaptation where the degree of use- 

 fulness is so small that we cannot believe it has "selective value," 

 and that even when useful reflex mechanisms have been fully 

 formed, " it is often beyond the power of sober credence to believe 

 that they now are, or ever can have been, of selective value in the 

 struggle for existence." 



Darwin's work would not have gained a hearing from contempo- 

 raries if he had not emphasized the results of artificial selection, 

 but I shall now try to show that this emphasis has led many to 

 infer, consciously or unconsciously, that the resemblance between 

 natural selection and the methods of the breeder is greater than it 

 really is ; and that the prevalence of the belief that selection cannot 

 account for the incipient stages of useful structures, and that there 

 may be useful adaptations without selective value, is itself a result 

 of Darwin's choice of the word selection ; for no one can doubt that 

 domesticated animals and cultivated plants may have characteris- 



