OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION 181 



ments are given. These slight proportional differences, due to the 

 laws of growth and variation, are not of the slightest use or im- 

 portance to most species. But it will have been otherwise with the 

 nascent giraffe, considering its probable habits of life; for those 

 individuals which had some one part or several parts of their 

 bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally have 

 survived. These will have intercrossed and left offspring, either 

 inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary 

 again in the same manner; while the individuals less favored in 

 the same respects will have been the most liable to perish. 



We here see that there is no need to separate single pairs, as 

 man does, when he methodically improves a breed: natural selec- 

 tion will preserve and thus separate all the superior individuals, 

 allowing them freely to intercross, and will destroy all the inferior 

 individuals. By this process long continued, which exactly cor- 

 responds with what I have called unconscious selection by man,' 

 combined, no doubt, in a most important manner with the in- 

 herited effects of the increased use of parts, it seems to me al- 

 most certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped might be con- 

 verted into a giraffe. 



To this conclusion Mr. Mivart brings forward two objections. 

 One is that the increased size of the body would obviously require 

 an increased supply of food, and he considers it as "very prob- 

 lematical whether the disadvantages thence arising would not, 

 in times of scarcity, more than counterbalance the advantages." 

 But as the giraffe does actually exist in large numbers in Africa, 

 and as some of the largest antelopes in the world, taller than an 

 ox, abound there, why should we doubt that, as far as size is con- 

 cerned, intermediate gradations could formerly have existed there, 

 subjected as now to severe dearths? Assuredly the being able to 

 reach, at each stage of increased size, to a supply of food left 

 untouched by the other hoofed quadrupeds of the country, would 

 have been of some advantage to the nascent giraffe. Nor must we 

 overlook the fact, that increased bulk would act as a protection 

 against almost all beasts of prey excepting the lion; and against 

 this animal, its tall neck — and the taller the better — would, as 

 Mr. Chauncey Wright has remarked, serve as a watch-tower. It 

 is from this cause, as Sir S. Baker remarks, that no animal is more 

 difficult to stalk than the giraffe. This animal also uses its long 

 neck as a means of offence or defence, by violently swinging its 

 head armed with stump-like horns. The preservation of each 

 species can rarely be determined by any one advantage, but by 

 the union of all, great and small. 



