334 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



feeding power by means of the altogether unique com- 

 bination of characters found in the giraffe. There has 

 been ample time for the process, probably the whole of 

 the pliocene period ; and in view of the known amount of 

 variability in all parts of the organism, and the inter- 

 mittent nature of the struggle for existence, there seems 

 far less difficulty in the production of this animal than in 

 the production of the beautiful and perfectly co-ordinated 

 greyhound in an almost infinitely shorter time. 



And now we see how very close is the parallelism 

 between artificial selection and natural selection, and how 

 purely imaginary are the difficulties of co-ordination set 

 forth so elaborately by Mr. Spencer. For, by the 

 preference of some men for swiftness in their dogs, of 

 others for those which followed game by sight rather than 

 by scent, of others again for elegant slenderness of form, 

 the greyhound, almost as perfect as we now see it, had 

 been already developed in the time of the ancient 

 Egyptians from some wolf-like wild ancestor. Men have 

 always preserved qualities, not single characters, just as 

 nature preserves the qualities of speed, strength, agility, 

 acute scent or vision, not any particular variation of bone, 

 muscle, or member. The two modes of selection are thus 

 strictly analogous and strictly comparable ; and the whole 

 elaborate structure of " insurmountable difficulty " founded 

 by Mr. Spencer on the supposed impossibility of adjust 

 ment of parts by variation and selection, falls to the 

 ground. As a matter of fact, there is a sufficiency of 

 useful variation always present in each succeeding 

 generation to increase any required life-preserving 

 quality, all theoretical objections to the contrary notwith- 

 standing. 



TJie Small Jaw in Civilised Man. 



In his Principles of Biology, Mr. Spencer discussed, 

 briefly, the smaller jaws of civilised races as only to be 

 explained by the inheritance of successive reductions pro- 

 duced by the use of softer food, since any advantage to be 

 gained by each step of the process would be too minute to 

 have any appreciable effect in saving life under any possi- 



