Alfred Russel Wallace 



overlook a few smaller points in which Natural Selection may 

 still act on men and brutes alike. Colour is one of them, 

 and I have alluded to this in correlation to constitution in 

 an abstract I have made at Sclater's request for the Natural 

 History Revieto.^ At the same time, there is so much evi- 

 dence of migrations and displacements of races of man, and 

 so many cases of peoples of distinct physical characters in- 

 habiting the same or similar regions, and also of races of 

 uniform physical characters inhabiting widely dissimilar 

 regions, that the external characteristics of the chief races 

 of man must I think be older than his present geographical 

 distribution, and the modifications produced by correlation 

 to favourable variations of constitution be only a secondary 

 cause of external modification. 



I hope you may get the returns from the Army. They 

 would be very interesting, but I do not expect the results 

 would be favourable to your view. 



With regard to the constant battles of savages leading 

 to selection of physical superiority, I think it would be 

 very imperfect, and subject to so many exceptions and 

 irregularities that it could produce no definite result. 

 For instance, the strongest and bravest men would lead, 

 and expose themselves most, and would therefore be most 

 subject to wounds and death. And the physical energy 

 which led to any one tribe delighting in war might lead to 

 its extermination by inducing quarrels with all surround- 

 ing tribes and leading them to combine against it. Again, 

 superior cunning, stealth and swiftness of foot, or even 

 better weapons, would often lead to victory as well as mere 

 physical strength. Moreover this kind of more or less per- 

 petual war goes on among all savage peoples. It could 

 lead therefore to no differential characters, but merely to 

 the keeping up of a certain average standard of bodily and 



1 Nat. Hist. Rev., 1864, p. 328. 

 156 



