w w 
QAATURAL' SELECTION. 
153 
to place itself in the evening at the entrance of its burrow, 
and stridulate until a female approaches, when the louder 
notes are succeeded by a more subdued tone, whilst the 
successful musician caresses with his antenna: the mate he 
has won." Ornaments of the male animal, like the cock's 
comb, the peacock's tail, the gorgeous plumage of the 
paradise bird, the brilliant color of the male butterfly, are 
made use of, like the weapons and musical tones just men- 
tioned, in obtaining the female. The old Spartan principle 
of killing the deformed and sickly, which resulted in the pro- 
duction of a magnificent race of men, is the action of Sexual 
Selection applied to man. Necessarily the offspring will 
exhibit marked improvement in beauty of form, develop- 
ment of talent, and powers of defense, if the fathers are 
always selected. from those who approach nearest the 
standard of excellence. 
Having illustrated now, we hope sufficiently well, the 
selection brought about by man and nature, let us see 
how they differ and in what they agree. Man selects 
knowingly, with an object; making use of variations, 
he modifies for his own advantage. Nature eliminates 
blindly, without an object, the organisms surviving being 
better fitted for existence through some advantage. Thus 
the Massachusetts farmer knowingly made use of the 
variation of a long body and short bandy legs, exhibited 
by one of his rams, to produce a particular race of sheep. 
But suppose the conditions of existence had been such 
that the short-legged sheep had some advantage over 
the long-legged ones in the struggle for existence, the 
favored ones would have survived, and nature blindly 
would have done in the long run what the farmer did 
in a few generations. A similar case would be that of a 
farmer who, having black and white pigs, wanted black 
pigs only. To attain this object he would knowingly sepa- 
rate the pigs, and breed from the black pigs alone. But if 
