90 NATURAL SELECTION AND 



tral ape wearing off his tail by sedentary habits 

 imagine that they are putting Darwin s theory 

 in a comic light, but have probably never taken 

 the trouble to understand natural selection. 1 

 The facts which, it has been supposed, can only 

 be explained by the transmission of the effects. 

 of use and disuse, turn out, however, either not 

 to be facts at all a misfortune that often 

 happens to " facts " or to admit of a perfectly 

 satisfactory explanation by the cessation of 

 natural selection. Thus the various contriv- 

 ances of civilisation, including spectacles, make 

 defective vision less injurious to human beings 



1 Here are two stanzas of a song on " The Origin of 

 Species " by a late learned and witty Scotch judge. They 

 are entirely " Lamarckian," though probably intended, and. 

 certainly generally believed, to represent Darwin's theory. 



"A deer with a neck that was longer by half 

 Than the rest of its family's (try not to laugh), 

 By stretching and stretching became a giraffe, 

 Which nobody can deny." 



# # # * . # 



" The four-footed beast that we now call a whale 

 Held his hind-legs so close that they grew to a tail, 

 Which it uses for threshing the sea like a flail, 

 Which nobody can deny." 



Songs and Verses by " An Old Contributor to Maga." p. 3. 



