150 THE HISTOEY OF CKEATION. 



honour of its eminent founder, and with full justice, be called 

 La7)iavcldsin, if the merit of having carried out such a 

 principle is to be linked to the name of a single distinguished 

 naturalist. On the other hand, the Theory of Selection, or 

 breeding, might be justly called Dariuinism, being that por- 

 tion of the Theory of Development which shows us in what 

 way and why the different species of organisms have de- 

 veloped from those simplest primary forms. (Gen. Morph. ii 

 166). 



It is true we find the first trace of an idea of natural 

 selection even forty years before the appearance of Darwin's 

 work. For in the year 1818 there was published a paper "On 

 a woman of the white race whose skin partly resembled that 

 of a negro," w^hich had been read before the Koyal Society 

 as early as 1813. Its author. Dr. W. C. Wells, states that 

 negroes and mulattoes are distinguished from the white race 

 by their immunity from certain tropical diseases. On this 

 occasion he remarks that all animals have a tendency to 

 change up to a certain degree, and that farmers, by availing 

 themselves of this tendency, and also by selection, improve 

 their domestic animals ; and then he adds, that what is done 

 in this latter case "by art, seems to be done with equal 

 efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation 

 of varieties of mankind fitted for the country which they 

 inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man which would 

 occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the 

 middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than 

 the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race 

 would consequently multiply, while the others would de- 

 crease ; not only from their inability to sustain the attacks 

 of disease, but from their incapacity of contending v/ith 



