MONSTROSITIES 323 



occurred, it would almost inevitably follow that more nervous 

 energy would be directed to it from generation to generation by 

 use, if it could be used, and it would increase in size until it reached 

 a maximum, beyond which it would become a drawback in the 

 struggle for life. Such a drawback must, I surmise, have happened 

 to the extinct Elephas Ganesa, with his enormous ten-feet tusks. 1 

 It must be plain also that if the tail-coverts of the Peacock were 

 to become twice or thrice their present length, they would become 

 an encumbrance and a disadvantage to the bird. The long nose 

 of the Elephant, the immense horns of the extinct Irish Deer, 

 the sword-shaped upper jaw of the Sword- Fish, the turned down 

 lower jaw tusks of the Dinotherium, and many other similar 

 extraordinary phenomena in animals, may have started as 

 monstrous features, all of a sudden, in one generation, and may have 

 afterwards become strengthened and larger by use. To be more 

 scientific, we shall call these 'jumps' or ' sports' in the evolution of 

 animals ' teratological variations,' so that the believers in the 

 gradual accumulation of small variations as the sole method of 

 evolution may not be shocked. 



It has been a wonder to me why Dr. Wallace and other 

 Darwinians ignored or rejected such a palpable help to the doctrine 

 of evolution, as the fact that monstrosities do occur, would afford. 

 This doctrine requires the support of every known fact, whether 

 that of minute accumulated variations, through many generations, 

 or that of a large variation produced all of a sudden. There is 

 evidence to show not only that such large and sudden variations, 

 at one birth, do occur, but that they are reproduced, and are not 

 always obliterated by crossing with normal forms. 



If you reject what palpably ought not to be rejected, you 



1 Gordon Gumming records a tusk 20 feet 9 inches long ! See Royal Natural History, 

 vol. ii. p. 546. 



