er 
‘ied eee 
fickle J) 
1870 | 

Comment M. Wallace le sait-il? Le lui aut-elles dit? 
N’importe, il le sait.” | 
It is a ple. sure to read anything so brilliant as this, but 
it hardly seems to touch the point of my argument. Male 
birds do sing at pairing time to the females. Mr. Darwin 
says in his “ Origin of Species,” ‘All those who have 
attended to the subject believe that there is the severest 
rivalry between the males of many species to attract, by 
singing, the females.” Female birds do zo¢ sing. These 
are ficts, and they perfectly accord with the theory of the 
perfection of song having been developed, in the wza/es, 
by sexual selection. In man the facts are all different. 
Savage women have generally no chozce as to their hus- 
bands, as has been so fully shown by Sir John Lubbock ; 
and in the few cases where achoice is open to them, there 
is not a particle of evidence to show that a musical voice 
ever determ nes that choice. Still less reason is there to 
think that this quality determines the male savage in 
choosing his wife. Yet a wonderful musical organ has 
been developed in both sexes, of which the use to man in 
his struggle for existence has not yet been shown. Surely 
here tsa difficulty which required facts and arguments for 
its elucidation rather than a brilliant display of wit. 
Again, in reply to my arguments as to the total absence 
of hair trom the back of man, we are told that it should 
be no difficulty to a person who believes that Aazry mam- 
mals and feathevy birds have been derived from sca/y 
reptiles (* Remarques,” pp. 27, 28) But surely this is not 
the argument of a Darwinian. For the hair and the 
feathers are ws:fu/ to their several possessors, just as the 
scales were to their aicestral reptiles; whereas the very | 
essence of my difficulty is, that the nudity has of been 
shown to be wse/zZ to man. M, Claparéde thus concludes 
his remirks on this subject :—‘‘Que M. Wallace soit au 
moins conséquent dans la question de la chute des poils. 
S1 linterven'ion d'une Force supérieure lui semble néces- 
saire pour épiler le dos de "homme, quil sache se résoudre 
a la faire agir de méme sur I’échine de I’é éphant, du rhi- 
nocéros, de l’hippopotame ou du cachalor.” But the four 
mammals here mentioned are thick skinned animals, one 
agua iv, one amphibious, the other two inhabitants of hot 
countries, lovers of shade and of marshes. Can anything 
be more clear than that, in all these cases, the hair was 

little or not at all wanted, and, owing to their habits, was 
very probably even injurious, and has therefore partially 
disappeared by means of natural selection? while the 
extinct mammoth and woolly rhino-eros are instances 
which prove that it always re-a»peared when the needs of 
the animal required it. If the hair disappeared from the 
back of troyical man by the action of the same law which 
caused it partially to disappear from the tropical elephant, 
we must ask why it dis not re-appear in the arctic Finns 
ani Ie-quimaux. as it re-appeared in the arctic mammoth ? 
It is rather for me to say —“ Que M. Clapueéde soit au 
moms conséyuent dans la ques ion de la ch te des poils.” 
The last point on which my critic remirks is my argu- 
ment. that the brain 0° savage man is in advance of his 
needs, and trer.fore could not have been acquired by 
natural selection; and he asks, why I do not apply the 
same reasoning to many other cises, especially to that of 
the great group of birds witha complex larynx, comprising 
all the singing birds. yet having many species which do 
not sing. He says (p. 29), * Ces oiseaux possédent dans 
leur Jarynx un organe beaucoup trop bien conformé pour 
Pusage qu’ils en font. 1] est donc néces-aire d’admettie 
Yintervention d'une Force supérieure pour fagonner cet 
appareil, inutile aux oiseaux qui le posstdent, mais calculé 
en vue de générations nouvelles qui, dans un avenir plus 
ou moins éloigné et dans des conditions déterminées ap- 
prendront a chanter. Que M. Wal ace aurait-il & 1épon- 
dre & une semb!able ar,umentation ?” My answer is, that 
the cases are not parallel or similir; if they were so, I 
should certainly adopt the same corclusion in both. To 
make them logically comparable, it would be necessary to 
NATURE S 
prove that all the earlier forms of the group had the vocal 
organs fully developed, but did not sing ; or what might 
be held to indicate this, that at present only a few species 
sing, while the great mass do not. But so far from this 
being the case, the majority of the species of the group 
have musical or sonorous voices, and there is no evidence 
to show that the vocal apparatus was fully developed before 
the power of singing began to be exercised. Man, on the 
contrary, stands alone in the development of his brain, 
and M. Claparéde does not rebut the evidence I have 
adduced to show that the brain in savage and prehistoric 
man was in advance of his requirements. 
In concluding his remarks, M. Claparéde endeavours to 
impale me neatly on the horns of a dilemma, as follows :-— 
‘““Ou bien M. Wallace a eu raison de faire intervenir une 
Force supérieure pour expliquer la formation des races 
humaines et guider homme dans la voie de la civilisation, 
et alors il a eu tort de ne pas faire agir cette méme force 
pour produire toutes les autres races et espéces animales 
ou végétales ; ou bien il a eu raison d’expliquer la forma- 
tion des espéces végétales et animales par la seule voie de 
la sélection naturelle, et alors il a eu tort de recourir A 
intervention d'une Force supéricure pour rendre compte 
de la formation des races humaines.” These are his last 
words, and they seem to me to be the weakest in the 
whole paper, being a pure begzing of the question. They 
assume that man presents no phenomena which differ in 
kind from those presented by other animals, whereas | 
have adduced a number of such phenomena which my 
critic has neither disproved nor denied. My whole argu- 
ment is founded on certain facts, and on these facts only. 
My critic admits the facts, does not rc fute my arguments, 
yet maintains that I should give up my conclusion, because 
the theory of Natural Selection #s¢ apply equally to man 
andthe rest of Nature, or to neither. But why must it do 
so? Darwin himself claims no such universality for it. 
He admits that even the common origin of avimals and 
plants rests only on analogy, and that “it is immaterial 
whether it is accepted or not.” But M. Claparéde is more 
Darwinian than Darwin himself, and would, I presume, 
say that, either all animals or plants must be descended 
from one common ancestor or, that no two species are 
thus descended. I maintain, however, that man is de- 
scended from a lower animal form, but I adduce facts 
which go to prove that some other law or power than 
Natuial Sel-ction has specially modified him. Jf Darwin 
is not anti-Darwinian in admitting, as he does, the possi- 
bility that animals and plants may not have had ac. mmon 
aucestor, I may surely deny that I am anti Darwinian 
when I show that there are certain phenomena in the 
case of man that cannot be wholly explained by the law 
of Natural Selection. 
I must not conclude without thanking M. Claparéde for 
the very flattering terms in which he has spoken of the 
larger portion of my work, and also for the general 
accuracy and fairness with which he has condensed my 
vies and arguments in the last essay, to which he 
especially takes objection. A, R. WALLACE 

THE NATURAL HISTORY UF MAN* 
N the two handsome volumes before us is contained 
such a mass of interesting information concerning 
our Icss cultivated brethren as has surely never yet been 
collected by one writer or in one work. The first volume 
is occupied with Africa, that vast, and, as recen’ researches 
show, d nscly populated land, whose peoples present a 
greater variety of manners and customs and languages 
than any others upon the globe, and the second treats of 
* “The Natural History of Man; being an Account of the Manners and 
Customs of the Wneivilised Kaces of Men.” By the Rev. J. G. W ood, 
M.aA., fF L.S., with new desi-ns by 2wecker, Angas, Danby, Har dicey, &c. 
Engraved by the brothers Lalziel. 2 vols. 1862-70. (London: George 
Routledge and Sons.) 
