26 . HOMO V. DARWIN. 



mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a 

 whale." 



Lvrd C. I never heard of a whale catching insects in the 

 water, nor even of a bear doing so. What sort of insects 

 were they ? 



Homo. That information, my Lord, Mr. Darwin does 

 not give us. It would manifestly require, however, a 

 prodigious quantity of any kind of insects that we are 

 acquainted with to fatten a bear into a whale. But I want 

 to know if Natural Selection, is at present carrying on a 

 process of this kind with any race of animals whatever. 



Darwin. Homo ought to have mentioned, my Lord, that 

 the passage he has just read is omitted from the subsequent 

 editions of the work in which it appeared. 



Homo. I am aware it is omitted, my Lord, and also that 

 no reason for the omission is given. Mr. Darwin does not 

 say whether he omitted it because he had seen reason to 

 change his mind regarding the power of Natural Selection, 

 or whether it was because some of his fellow naturalists 

 thought the statement so monstrous that they requested its 

 suppression. For one might think that, if Natural Selection 

 could turn black bears into creatures like whales, it might 

 also, especially when aided by the contrivances of human 

 reason, turn pigs into creatures like elephants. 



Lord G. Are you not going beyond Mr. Darwin, Homo, 

 in conceiving such an idea ? 



Homo. I think not, my Lord. A pig is quite as like 

 an elephant as a black bear is like a whale. Indeed, the 

 pig has the advantage. Its habitat is on dry land, like 

 that of the bear. Then, its snout bears a remote resem- 

 blance to the trunk of an elephant. Lamarck supposed that 

 the giraffe acquired its long neck by having had originally 

 to seek its food in the overhanging branches of trees. The 



