EVOLUTION 5 



straight hair ; the hair of others is short and woolly. 

 And everywhere Nature has adapted every race to 

 its particular environment. The Negro flourishes 

 in West Africa, where the Englishman perishes. 

 The Negro dies almost as surely in London. The 

 Esquimau and the naked Tierra Del Fuegian are 

 able to endure extremes of cold. The native of 

 India sits unharmed with bare shaven head in the 

 full glare of the tropic sun. By their big brains 

 Europeans and some Asiatics are fitted for the 

 complex conditions of civilised life ; simpler, but 

 not less stringent conditions, have developed to an 

 extraordinary degree the senses, the sight, smell, 

 hearing, of Australian Aborigines. 



It is not possible, then, for any sane human 

 being to doubt evolution. In particular, it is not 

 possible for the orthodox Christian, who derives 

 the human races from Adam and Eve, to doubt it. 

 Such a one must admit also that evolution may be 

 very rapid since, according to him, six or seven 

 thousand years only have sufficed to produce types 

 so widely divergent as the Scandinavian and the 

 African Pigmy. That evolution is very rapid may 

 be proved beyond doubt by a study of our culti- 

 vated plants and domesticated animals. A very few 

 generations only separate some of our most highly 

 modified garden and orchard plants from their wild 

 congeners. The evolution of our prize breeds 



