NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 251 



than the pigmies. That pigmies, too, could come out of 

 giants such pigmies out of such giants! Was it 

 selection, natural selection, condescended to such a feat as 

 that ? There was here a mere suggestion to Mr. Darwin, 

 but are we to suppose that Mr. Darwin's consequent work, 

 natural selection, is only to progress to such consum- 

 mations ? Is that what is meant by " the preservation of 

 favoured races in the struggle for existence" these 

 pigmies ? The nine-foot Glyptodon dies, the six-inch 

 armadillo lives is that the survival of the fittest ? Mr. 

 Darwin has a very great respect for the great Palaeonto- 

 logist Pictet. Now it is Pictet who says, " The theory of 

 Mr. Darwin agrees ill with the history of the types of 

 clearly - defined, sharply-cut forms which seem to have 

 existed only for a limited period : hundreds of examples 

 of such might be cited, as the flying reptiles, the ichthyo- 

 sauria, the belemnites, the ammonites," etc. ; and Mr. 

 Darwin is much "struck" with this (ii. 297), and even 

 double-pencil marks it " good ; " but in what respect are 

 these ichthyosauria, flying reptiles, etc., more wonderful, 

 and more questionable, than those Glyptodons, Sceli- 

 dotheria, Macrauchenia, etc. ? Then what can have more 

 the character of a mere middle than that simple sequence 

 of " closely allied " that " replace " each other southwards ? 

 Surely each of these successive strips must find itself only 

 in the midst of an indefinite middle ; and is the receipt 

 for an epic poem, " in medias res," all that is required to 

 be satisfactory here on the part of a naturalist ? 



The position so far, to say the least of it, must be 

 allowed to exhibit itself as not quite a clear one. Origin, 

 if a necessity for the six-inch armadillo, is not a bit less 

 a necessity for the nine-foot Glyptodon to which for 

 explanation Mr. Darwin refers us. If number two 

 closely allied species originates in number one of the 

 series, where did number one itself come from ? And as 



