96 Luck, or Cunning ? 
faith, and his desire that we should understand that with 
him, as with Mr. Darwin, variations are mainly accidental, 
not functional. Thus, in his memorable paper communi- 
cated to the Linnean Society in 1858 he said, in a passage 
which I have quoted in “‘ Unconscious Memory ” :— 
“ The hypothesis of Lamarck—that progressive changes 
in species have been produced by the attempts of the 
animals to increase the development of their own organs, 
and thus modify their structures and habits—has been 
repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject 
of varieties and species ; . . . but the view here developed 
renders such an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . . The 
powerful retractile talons of the falcon and cat tribes have 
‘not been produced or increased by the volition of those 
animals ; . . . neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck 
by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, 
and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose, but 
because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes 
with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh range 
of pasture over the same ground as their shorter-necked com- 
panions, and on the first scarcity of food were thus enabled 
to outlive them” (italics in original).* 
“Which occurred’ is obviously ‘“ which happened to 
occur, by some chance or accident entirely unconnected 
with use and disuse ;’’ and though the word “ accidental ” 
is never used, there can be no doubt about Mr. Wallace’s 
desire to make the reader catch the fact that with him 
accident, and not, as with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, 
sustained effort, is the main purveyor of the variations 
whose accumulation amounts ultimately to specific dif- 
ference. It is a pity, however, that instead of contenting 
himself like a theologian with saying that his opponent 
had been refuted over and over again, he did not refer to 
any particular and tolerably successful attempt to refute 
* “ Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society.’”’ Williams 
and Norgate, 1858, p. 61. 
