NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 293 



in the very idea that constitutes it, means a limit And 

 limit there is none. Blacks, and whites, and blues, and 

 reds,- and greens, and yellows, are to be seen indiscrimin- 

 ately mingled, almost everywhere blacks, and whites, 

 and reds, and greens, etc., in almost every possible 

 shading-^-nay, in almost every possible variegation, too ! 

 All that pretty anecdotical rationalising story-telling 

 in regard to the leopard, too (the grandfather has it), is 

 it not of the same kind ? There are so many leopards 

 in existence because their spots, confounded with the 

 interstitial light and dark of the jungle, save them. 

 But if that is so, why are there quite as many tigers, 

 animals that are not spotted but striped ? Oh, the 

 ghauts, the ghauts, you cry. Well, yes, the ghauts are 

 denies ; but how is a stripe like a defile, or how does it 

 come from a defile, or as being like a defile how does 

 it save them? But admitting that, and saying that 

 leopards are saved by spots, and tigers by -stripes, what 

 of the lions ? They can be saved by neither neither 

 by spots nor by stripes, and they are equally numerous, 

 or supposably equally numerous and supposedly so is 

 the vernacular of the region why is there no call for 

 either spots or stripes in their case ? Or, after all, just 

 as it is, spotless, stripeless, is not the lion quite as likely 

 to escape detection in the jungle as either of the others, 

 let it be leopard, let it be tiger ? Its whelp is striped, 

 Mr. Darwin says ; but to what good ? Or, leaving the 

 lion alone, what of the elephant ? Such a great, huge 

 monster, with the gleaming ivory of his tusks, and the 

 exposing peculiarity of his trunk, not to mention the 

 betraying heaviness of his tread, and the bursting, rend- 

 ing noisiness of his march why is it possible for any 

 such uncovered animal to exist at all if it is specially 

 by reason of their coveredness that there are animals 

 as lions, leopards, and tigers ? Might we not use here, 



