88 PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION 



the minute barbicels. When we think we understand any 

 particular case of adaptation perfectly, I believe it often happens 

 that some small point has passed unnoticed, which small point, 

 nevertheless, is the finishing touch that perfects the work of 

 art. Here as in so many situations of life, Robert Browning's 

 couplet, that made Tennyson envious, may be appropriately 

 quoted : 



" Oh ! the little more and how much it is ! 

 And the little less and what worlds away ! " 



Mr A failure to appreciate this fact has led Mr Herbert Spencer 



Spencer's to & n ^ a P ure ly imaginary difficulty, or at least to make a 



failure to mountain out of a mole-hill. He has called attention to the 



th P eir C im- difference in the power of discrimination possessed by the human 



portance s kin in different places. An accurate measurement of these 



differences has been obtained by applying needle-points, held 



at various distances, to this and that part. When there was 



but the slightest distance between the points, the tongue was 



sensitive to each separately; when the back was so tested 



there was only one blurred sensation, but when the interspaces 



were considerably increased then there too each individual point 



was distinctly felt. 



How has this difference in sensitiveness arisen ? On Lamarckian 

 principles, replies Mr Herbert Spencer. The tongue is con- 

 stantly exercised in the work of subtle discrimination and its 

 acquired sensitiveness is transmitted to the next generation. 

 As to Natural Selection, we cannot imagine, he says, a man 

 being selected and surviving because of a slightly superior 

 sensitiveness in his tongue. 



Here we see failure to appraise small things at their proper 

 value. In this case we may assume that the tactile sensitiveness 

 goes along with subtlety of palate. They are both forms of 

 nerve-power and their office is a most important one : they 

 enable their possessor in many cases to distinguish poisonous 

 from wholesome food. Knowledge as to what is good to eat 

 and what is not, had to be learnt, before the days of chemical 

 analysis, by experiment, and sensation in the region of the 

 tongue and palate enabled the experimenter to reject a great 



