110 GENERAL EVOLUTION. 



'' The inferences which I draw from these facts are not op- 

 posed to one of the leading propositions of Darwin's theory. 



*^ With him I have no faith in the opinion that the mammoth 

 and other extinct elephants made their appearance suddenly, after 

 the type in which their fossil remains are pre:ented to us. The 

 most rational view seems to be, that they are in some shape 

 the modified descendants of earlier progenitors. Eut if the as- 

 serted facts be correct, they seem clearly to indicate that the older 

 elephants of Europe, such as U. meridionalis and E. antiqmis, 

 were not the stocks from which the later species, E. primigenius 

 and E. africanus sprung, and that we must look elsewhere for 

 their origin. The nearest affinity, and that a very close one, of 

 the European E. mericlio7ialis, is with the Miocene E. (Loxod.) 

 planifrons of India, and of E. primige?iius with the existing In- 

 dian species. 



*^ Another reflection is equally strong in my mind, that the 

 [theories of the origin of] species by ^ natural selection,' or a pro- 

 cess of variation from external influences, are inadequate to ac- 

 count for the phenomena. The law of Phyllotaxis, which gov- 

 erns the evolution of leaves around the axis of a plant, is nearly 

 as constant in its manifestation as any of the physical laws con- 

 nected with the material world." 



6. Js affectiiig Specific Characters. 



As I have hitherto attempted to prove that the higher grade 

 of groups, or, in other words, the higher grade of characters, 

 could not have had their origin through natural selection alone, 

 though admitting it as a conserving or restricting principle, I 

 now come to ground where natural selection must be allowed full 

 sway. The " origin of species " is not the object of this essay, as 

 a greater has gone before me, and has done a great deal toward 

 showing that a selective power, deiDcndent on adaptation and tele- 

 ological relation, has favored or repressed, or even called into ex- 

 istence, the varied peculiarities that characterize species and races. 

 I will therefore only refer to his well-known works on the ^^ Origin 

 of Species " and the ^' Modifications of Animals under Domestica- 

 tion." 



I may add that it is within the range of possibility that that 

 grade or kind of characters found to define i\iQ family group may 

 be more or less the result of natural selection. 



Acceleration and retardation are also far from excluded from 



