SOME STRANGE MARRIAGE-CUSTOMS 275 



and the only purpose in life is to be eaten. But happily 

 Oysters don't think. They and their kind are simply 

 semi-conscious living things, responding mechanically 

 to stimuli. Any approach, then, to beauty, either of 

 form or coloration, or both, must be regarded as due to 

 innate, inherent changes in the germ-plasm affecting 

 the parts so made conspicuous : the only form of selec- 

 tion to which such " ornaments " can be subjected is 

 Natural Selection. If, and when, such ornaments 

 penalize their possessor either by their cumbrousness 

 or their conspicuous characters, or by increasing the 

 difficulty of feeding or distributing offspring, then the 

 further development of such excrescences is checked 

 by the death of all individuals which have passed the 

 bounds of endurance in this respect. 



Sex, and all that appertains thereto, in short, is in 

 these creatures reduced to its lowest terms. There 

 are not wanting, to-day, both men and women, who 

 affect to believe that all would be well for the human 

 race could a similar slowing-down, or strangulation, of 

 the sexual instincts be brought about. Such bhnd 

 leaders might profitably contemplate the Oyster : but 

 such contemplation, to be profitable, requires intelligence 

 of a higher order than these protagonists of folly appear 

 to possess. 



In justice to Darwin it should be remarked that he 

 himself fully realized, and carefully points out, the incon- 

 ceivability of the application of the Sexual Selection 

 theory to the Mollusca. In commenting on the beauty 

 of colour and shape which many species display, he 

 remarks : " The colours do not appear in most cases, 

 to be of any use as a protection ; they are probably the 

 direct result, as in the lowest classes, of the nature of the 



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