4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the fact that the first clear premonition of the theory of natural selec- 

 tion came from this country. 



William Charles Wells, born in this country, at Charleston, South 

 Carolina, in 1757, in a paper read before the Royal Society, in 1813, 

 first substantially originated the theory to account for the black skin 

 of the negro. He limits his application to races of men and certain 

 peculiarities of color, correlated with an immunity from certain dis- 

 eases ; in proof of it he cites domesticated animals, and the selection 

 by man in precisely the same line of argument urged by Darwin. In 

 the preface to the last edition to the " Origin of Species," Darwin 

 refers to Wells's essay as entitled to the credit of containing the ear- 

 liest known recognition of the principle. Dr. Wells first shows that 

 varieties among men as among animals are always occurring, and 

 having cited the way in which man selects certain qualities among 

 domesticated animals and thus secures different breeds, -calls atten- 

 tion to the well-known fact that the black as well as the white races 

 are differently affected by certain diseases of the countries which 

 they inhabit. He finds a coincidence between the immunity from 

 certain diseases and the black color of the skin, though why this is 

 so he does not attempt to explain. He thinks that, through the suc- 

 cessive survival of dark skins, the dark variety of the human race 

 has become fixed. Referring to the man's selective action regarding 

 domesticated animals, he says : " But what is here done by art seems 

 to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by Nature, in the 

 formation of varieties of mankind fitted for the country which they 

 inhabit." These sentences have such a Darwinian sound that, when 

 we remember they were dragged from obscurity by Mr. Darwin him- 

 self, we can share in what a recent writer ' happily calls " Mr. Dar- 

 win's evident delight at discovering that some one else had said his 

 good things before him, or has been on the verge of uttering them." 

 As early as 1843, Prof. Haldeman 2 discussed some of the arguments 

 brought forward by the opponents of the Lamarckian theory, and 

 offered certain views in favor of the transmutation of species. While 

 he does not hint at the laws of natural selection, he recognizes fully 

 the value of varieties and their persistency and ultimate divergence. 

 He says, "Although we may not be able artificially to produce a 

 change beyond a given point, it would be a hasty inference to suppose 

 that a physical agent acting gradually for ages could not carry the 

 variation a step or two farther, so that instead of the original one we 

 will say four varieties, they might amount to six, the sixth being suf- 

 ficiently unlike the earlier ones to induce a naturalist to consider it 

 distinct." 



In the year 1850, Dr. Joseph Leidy, in a paper on entophyta in 

 living animals, wrote as follows: " The essential conditions of life are 



1 Gray's " Darwiniana," p. 284. 



2 Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. iv., p. 368. 



