68 



I believe that the bright colours in snakes may "perhaps" be due 

 to the admiration of the male for the female, or of the female for 

 the male. You may ask me what evidence I have to prove this ? 

 What is evidence good for unless it proves my theory ? That is 

 the way I answer one question by another. Don't argue that if 

 it existed " in the eyes " of the female, that is all the same as 

 existing in the eyes of man, inasmuch as the one is, on the 

 Darwinian theory, a derivative of the other. I can't help it, so 

 e'en let it be. You want certainty, do you? What is one 

 certainty in comparison with a score or more of improbabilities, 

 I should be glad to know ? 



I believe that the beautiful eyes in the wing of the Argus 

 Pheasant were produced by the desire of the male bird to exhibit 

 himself to advantage before the female, and " in no other way." 

 You may think that the oblong spots which (on my theory) gave 

 way in the course of " billions " of years to the round ones, for 

 this end and object, even more beautiful than the eventual 

 rounded ones. Let the bird be the judge about that. " Tastes 

 differ," you know. 



I believe, with Lucretius, that the Goddess of Beauty was 

 thus the creative power of the world. It is no business of mine. 

 You may consider it a gross and degrading idea, worthy only of 

 the Heathen Poet. That I cannot help. 



I believe, as I have all along said, in the " survival " of the 

 stronger creatures, and the " extermination " of all the weaker 

 ones. You ask me how I can reconcile this doctrine with the 

 disappearance from the earth of the Mammoth, whose skull alone T 

 without the tusks, which were nine feet long, weighed four 

 hundred pounds ; of the Mastodon, the mightiest animal known 

 to have lived ; of the Megatherium, that " great beast," as 

 Professor Sedgwick well and wittily called it at the meeting of 

 the British Association at York, a monster clothed in " armour 

 plate," whose feet were a yard long; of the gigantic Dinotherium, 

 no less than eighteen feet in length ; of the Iguanodon, seventy 

 feet on end; of the Icthyosaurus, with jaws six feet in length 

 and containing a hundred and eighty teeth ; of the Plesiosaurus, 

 of enormous size, with the head of a lizard, the teeth of a 

 <>dile, the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the 



