Evidences of Theory of Natural Selection. 313 
different directions must in this case have been 
produced by artificial selection in so comparatively 
short a time—the first mention of this bird that I can 
find being by Gesner, in the sixteenth century. 
Now, it is surely unquestionable that in these 
typical proofs of the efficacy of artificial selection in 
the modification of specific types, we have the strongest 
conceivable testimony to the power of natural selection 
in the same direction. For it thus appears that 
wherever mankind has had occasion to operate by 
selection for a sufficiently long time—that is to say, on 
whatever species of plant or animal he chooses thus to 
operate for the purpose of modifying the type in any 
required direction,—the results are always more or less 
the same: he finds that all specific types lend them- 
selves to continuous deflection in any particulars of 
structure, colour, &c., that he may desire to modify. 
Nevertheless, to this parallel between the known 
effects of artificial selection, and the inferred effects of 
natural selection, two objections have been urged. 
The first is, that in the case of artificial selection the 
selecting agent is a voluntary intelligence, while in the 
case of natural selection the selecting agent is Nature 
herself ; and whether or not there is any counterpart 
of man’s voluntary intelligence in nature is a question 
with which Darwinism has nothing to do. Therefore, 
it is alleged, the ey between natural selection 
and artificial selection fails ab zzz¢zo, or at the fountain- 
head of the causes which are taJgen by the analogy to 
be respectively involved. 
«= *thes “objection to alogy is, that the 
products Pa Ghcial selectio ly as they may 
« 
