198 WALTER KIDD, ESQ., M.D., F.Z.S., 



in Secoiulaiy and Tcrtiavv times. And when a vague con- 

 ception is attempted ot'the futility of natural selection a]tplicd 

 to individual Foraminifera, Criuoids, Sponges, and Corals, 

 which in more recent times are flooring the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Oceans with the " Atlantic ooze," and have built up 

 the limestone and flmt Avhich have entered so largely into the 

 earth's crust, we caiuiot but wonder how the process of pro- 

 gressive transformation, or survival of the fittest, or natural 

 selection ever began. 



We are thus met with a diminished number of acres of the 

 once fair inheritance of natural selection, origin of species of 

 protozoa unaccounted for by natural selection, as to proof, 

 and even in imagination — facts of beauty in general un- 

 accounted for by natural selection — those of lower inverte- 

 brata by sexual selection — those of plants self- fertilized or 

 fertilized by wind — those of larv^ of lepidoptera unaccounted 

 for by sexual selection — parasites by either natural or sexual 

 selection. 



There are results which would have been looked for from 

 natural selection, but which it has not produced. The dog 

 has been domesticated by man certainly from early AssAn-ian 

 times and probably in those of paUeolithic man, from the 

 Avild forms of Camda3 indigenous to the various countries in 

 which they exist. This period would at the lowest calcula- 

 tion reach back five thousand years — Prince Kropotkin and 

 others might allow twenty thousand, and others thirty 

 thousand years. At any rate during a vast stretch of time 

 artificial selection has been carried on by man among the 

 descendants of the wolf, and the extent of this is visible all 

 around us in the bewildering varieties of the dog in every 

 land. The change of intelligence Avhich has been produced 

 is described by Iluxley* with his usual felicity as that wliich 

 has converted the brother of the Avolf into the faithful 

 guardian of the flock, and he hazarded the hope that the 

 same intelligence which had produced this result might do 

 much to change the nature of man himself — a poor substitute, 

 by the way, for the Commandments given on the Mount to 

 Moses, and for the New Connnandment given in later days. 

 But in the change wrought in the brother of the Avolf as to 

 intelligence or instinct by artificial selection, a most remark- 

 al)l(j result has been produced, and by its very contrast to 

 the small jihysiological change, it is the more remarkable. 



* Evolution and Ethics, \\ 3C. 



