DARWINISM. 23 



every race of creatures, man included, it does at times 

 become, the smallest advantageous variation will give 

 its possessor a superior chance of surviving, while the 

 smallest that is disadvantageous will diminish the 

 chance. Take the apposite instance of a number of 

 quadrupeds incapable of climbing, supported by brows- 

 ing on the leaves of trees during a dearth of other 

 suitable food. When the lower leaves within the 

 general reach were exhausted, the famine still con- 

 tinuing, those animals alone would survive which, by 

 some peculiarity, could reach the higher leaves. In 

 this way, those that could spring best, those that could 

 assume even a climbing posture, those endowed with 

 the longest legs, snouts, or necks, would be selected. 

 In some such a way, then, we can conceive the jumping 

 powers of the kangaroo and the antelope, the climbing 

 powers of the bear and the cat, the trunk of the elephant, 

 and the long neck of the giraffe to have been evolved 

 by natural selection. The keen scent of the hound, the 

 sharp eye of the lynx, the gay colours of the butterfly, 

 the splendid plumage of the bird of Paradise, are all 

 easy to account for on this principle of natural selection. 

 So, too, are the dull colours of many female birds, to 

 whom obscurity is useful in protecting their young ; 

 so, too, the almost blindness of the mole, which works 

 in the dark, and to which an instrument at once delicate 

 and useless, would entail the risk of positive injury. 



The principle explains what no other hypothesis has 

 ever done, not only Nature's perfection, which, in the 

 hour of ease, we are ready to believe in, but what has 



