150 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
honour of its eminent founder, and with full justice, be called 
Lamarckism, if the merit of having carried out such a 
principle is to be linked to the name of a single distinguished. 
naturalist. On the other hand, the Theory of Selection, or 
breeding, might be justly called Darwinism, being that por- 
tion of the Theory of Development which shows us in what 
way and why the different species of organisms have de- 
veloped from those simplest primary forms. (Gen. Morph. i. 
166). 
It is true we find the first trace of an idea of natural 
selection even forty years before the appearance of Darwin’s 
work. For in the year 1818 there was published a paper “On 
a woman of the white race whose skin partly resembled that 
of a negro,” which had been read before the Royal Society 
as early as 1813. Its author, Dr. W. C. Wells, states that 
negroes and mulattoes are distinguished from the white race 
by their immunity from certain tropical diseases. On this 
occasion he remarks that all animals have a tendency to 
change up to a certain degree, and that farmers, by availing 
themselves of this tendency, and also by selection, improve 
their domestic animals ; and then he adds, that what is done 
in this latter case “by art, seems to be done with equal 
efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation. 
of varieties of mankind fitted for the country which they 
inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man which would 
occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the 
* middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than 
the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race- 
would consequently multiply, while the others would de- 
crease; not only from their inability to sustain the attacks: 
of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with 
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