312 DARWINIANISM. 



Very curious all that to the raison d'etre of natural 

 selection ! The usual relation to the process of natural 

 selection is also implied in that sentence (the last quoted 

 about a protective " provision " through " modification " 

 of protective spines into a protective rattle) but only 

 to the thickening of the contradictious. The porcupine 

 is one of the strangest animals in existence ; it is covered 

 with the most curious variegated horny quills, which, 

 being pointed, can be erected by the creature and con- 

 stitute its defence. I am almost tempted to feel sure 

 that not even the all-powerful ingenuity of a Darwin 

 could, simply for the spines as the spines to begin with, 

 start a theory of natural accidental variation, followed by 

 natural accidental selection, that would account for the 

 natural birth and development of these extraordinary 

 provisions. It is not to that, the fundamental evolution, 

 however, it is not to the spines that Mr. Darwin alludes, 

 but only to the " modification " of them into the tail- 

 rattle, at the same time that he unmistakably points to 

 the advantage of the rattle as the raison d'etre at all of 

 the formation of it. In consequence of the advantage to 

 the creature in the dark, it gradually attained in its tail 

 to a modification of its " protective spines," which came, 

 more and more, in that situation, to sound like a rattle 

 when, in a vibration, they clashed. i 



Now, considering the tameness of the animal itself, 

 the food it eats, and the peculiarity of its total existence, 

 I cannot for the life of me imagine, as Mr. Darwin 

 allows me to say, what possible advantage of any first 

 i'aint accidental sound in its tail leave alone how 



Mr. Darwin is understood to have laid down the rule "that no 

 creature could have an organ that was useful to any other animal 

 than itself." See Origin, p. 159 sqq. To say "exclusive" good, as 

 on ]>. 1(5:?, is wofully to hedge : of course the rattle is not an ex- 

 clusive good to the others ; the porcupine itself has its share in it. 





