444 THE CAUSES OF THE xi 



so term it depending for its success on the 

 strength of the cloth of the Cuirassier s cloak. It 

 is the same in nature ; every species has its bridge of 

 Beresina ; it has to fight its way through and strug 

 gle with other species ; and when well-nigh over 

 powered, it may be that the smallest chance, some 

 thing in its colour, perhaps the minutest circum 

 stance will turn the scale one way or the other. 



Suppose that by a variation of the black race it 

 had produced the white man at any time you 

 know that the Negroes are said to believe this to 

 have been the case, and to imagine that Cain 

 was the first white man, and that we are his 

 descendants suppose that this had ever hap 

 pened, and that the first residence of this human 

 being was on the West Coast of Africa. There is no 

 great structural difference between the white man 

 and the Negro, and yet there is something so sin 

 gularly different in the constitution of the two, 

 that the malarias of that country, which do not 

 hurt the black at all, cut off and destroy the white. 

 Then you see there would have been a selective 

 operation performed ; if the white man had risen 

 in that way, he would have been selected out and 

 removed by means of the malaria. Now there 

 really is a very curious case of selection of this 

 sort among pigs, and it is a case of selection of 

 colour too. In the woods of Florida there are a 

 great many pigs, and it is a very curious thing that 

 they are all black, every one of them. Professor 



