804 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



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 selection will preserve and thus separate 

 all the superior individuals, allowing them freely to in- 

 tercross, and will destroy all the inferior individuals. By 

 this process long-continued, which exactly corresponds 

 with what I have called unconscious selection by man, 

 combined no doubt in a most important manner with the 

 inherited effects of the increased use of parts, it seems 

 to me almost certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped 

 might be converted 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 problematical whether the 

 disadvantages thence arising would not, in times of scar- 

 city, more than counterbalance the advantages." But as 

 the giraffe does actually exist in large numbers in South 

 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 concerned, intermediate gra- 

 dations 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 coun- 

 try, 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. 



