NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 323 



of Mr. Darwin could ever have strung itself to so vast 

 a difference ? Why, even the grandfather's reasonings 

 from the effect of cold at birth have more reason in 

 them. Is it not a stretch of imagination, too, to ex- 

 plain the dislike of cats to the wetting of their feet by 

 " their having aboriginally inhabited the dry country of 

 Egypt " ? Where, then, were the poor brutes during 

 the Nile overflow, and all the time the pigs were 

 trampling the seeds into the wet mud after it ? Cats 

 cannot stay shut up in houses ; they must visit one 

 another. Originating in Egypt, then, we should expect 

 them to be both excellent swimmers and excellent mud- 

 waders. 



The genealogy of the talent of a Beethoven or a 

 Mozart, Mr. Darwin finds in the early wooing of man : 

 " I maintain," he says (p. 87), "that the habit of utter- 

 ing musical sounds was first developed as a means of 

 courtship in the early progenitors of man." I really 

 should not have wondered much if Mr. Darwin, in the 

 implicitness of his faith, had declared the smell of 

 ammonia to be inherited, and the stink of excrement 

 merely a habit. I suppose we stretch ourselves by 

 inheritance, stamp our feet by inheritance, yawn by 

 inheritance, and by inheritance sneeze. In fact, as 

 much is directly asserted (p. 40) : " It is probable that 

 sneezing and coughing were originally acquired by the 

 habit of expelling, as violently as possible, any irritating 

 particles from the sensitive air-passages." How then is 

 it, in the case of a sneeze, that the air is not first 

 violently expelled, but that, on the contrary, it must, 

 first of all, with even preternatural violence, be suddenly 

 drawn in ? Irritating particles for the air-passages are 

 most likely to be found there at times of eating : were 

 the spasmodic draught of air to go through the mouth 

 then, it would even sweep a bolus into the trachea 



