' 
277 
Specialized structures like the long neck of the giraffe and 
the proboscis of the elephant, to take familiar instances, are, in 
my opinion, developmental variations. They did not arise, in 
the first place, in certain members of the pre-giraffian or pre- 
elephantine species, as abnormal or “spontaneous” variations 
which gave their possessors such great superiority over their 
fellows in the struggle for existence, that those possessors 
survived by the law of Natural Selection. These features 
began imperceptibly—the neck and the nose grew more in 
proportion to other features during the lives of the individ- 
uals, on account of the habits of the animals; and they may 
be compared in this repect to the enlarging skull of civilised 
Man. 
As the features of the adult become in course of time 
features of the adolescent by the law of earlier inheritance, the 
elongation of nose and neck would become exaggerated from — 
one generation to another. I do not see any reason to suppose, 
at any rate at first, that the giraffian or elephantine ancestors 
were the favoured individuals of the community, and that the 
other members died out because they did not possess elongated 
necks or noses. I do not suppose that all the members of the 
species possessed these features in the same degree; but I 
do imagine that a gradually increasing elongation was more 
or less common to all the members of the pre-giraffian or 
q pre-elephantine species as a result of their habits. 
To take the case of the giraffe alone, for the sake of 
 clearness—it is hardly necessary to suppose occasional droughts 
during which those members of the community with the 
longest necks would survive, while others starved because they 
were not able to reach such high branches as their longer- 
necked fellows. An extra inch or so of neck could not make 
go much difference as this.* 
[* The adults would have the best of it in a drought on account of their 
larger size. Therefore if there were a long-necked “sport” among the young 
pre-giraffes it would have no chance against the adults unless its neck were of a 
_ preternatural length.] 
M 
