ADAPTATIONS 



tations at an eyelid, and not pass on to the 

 Eye itself, would be like a tourist failing 

 to go beyond the railroad station of the 

 great city which he had reached. There 

 is scarcely a tissue of the body which is 

 not represented in the eye, besides a num- 

 ber of others not found elsewhere, and if 

 we include the connections of the eye with 

 the brain, the number and variety of its 

 specific adaptations well-nigh exceed com- 

 putation. Darwin is reported to have 

 said that the eye made him shudder when 

 he thought of accounting for it by Nat- 

 ural Selection. Now the radical difficulty 

 with natural selection is that it cannot 

 produce anything, nor originate anything, 

 least of all produce an adaptation, whether 

 simple or complex. All it can do is to 

 select and perpetuate an adaptation al- 

 ready made. When a housewife picks out 

 of a barrel the apples which are beginning 

 to rot, her selection has not produced a 

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