48 DARWINIANISM. 



the taillessness of the dogs of Naples and Rome, from 

 the practice of docking them ! He tells of the effect 

 of the seasons, too, as on hares and partridges. It is 

 undoubtedly a doctrine essential with him that " the 

 individual, by its own exertions, acquires forms which it 

 sends on ; " and in this it is Lamarck he anticipates, 

 and not Charles; who would substitute for "by its own 

 exertions," % its own accidents ! " When we enumerate 

 the great changes produced on the species of animals 

 before their nativity ; these are such as resemble the 

 form or colour of their parents, which have been altered 

 by the cultivation or accidents above related, and are 

 thus continued to their posterity ; " this is a bad sen- 

 tence of Krause's (p. 175); its meaning may seem to lie 

 in the direction of the " central idea," " modification," 

 and it certainly includes what Charles's theory includes 

 the modification of accident ; but stili, as an expression 

 of Erasmus, what is mainly in reference are the modifi- 

 cations of habit and cultivation. Not but that Erasmus, 

 quite as much as Charles, thinks of cattle and sheep 

 and, naturally, of pouters and fantails as well ; neither 

 does the former, any more than the latter, exclude culti- 

 vation applied to the individual difference of accident. 

 To Erasmus, too, sex does much. It arms the male 

 with weapons in defence of the female ; and it endows 

 the female with irresistible bloom and grace for the 

 seduction of the male. So it is that boars, which are 

 not naturally carnivorous, have acquired tusks ; and so 

 it is also that against the oblique upward stroke of such 

 tusks, they get provided, through experience and time, 

 with a thick horny skin on the shoulder. Just so " the 

 horns of the stag are sharp to offend his adversary, but 

 are branched for the purpose of parrying or receiving the 

 thrusts of horns similar to his own " (Krause, pp. 17879). 

 Device and contrivance may seem a little double-edged 



